2015/10/22 by Thomas Dueholm Hansen, Haim Kaplan, Hansen, Thomas Dueholm +5 · 2 citations
Computer Science · #Algorithms and Data Compression #Network Packet Processing and Optimization #semigroups and automata theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1510.06535
We introduce the hollow heap, a very simple data structure with the same amortized efficiency as the classical Fibonacci heap. All heap operations except delete and delete-min take O(1) time, worst case as well as amortized; delete and delete-min take O(log n) amortized time on a heap of n items. Hollow heaps are by far the simplest structure to achieve this. Hollow heaps combine two novel ideas: the use of lazy deletion and re-insertion to do decrease-key operations, and the use of a dag (directed acyclic graph) instead of a tree or set of trees to represent a heap. Lazy deletion produces hollow nodes (nodes without items), giving the data structure its name.