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Data Structures & Algorithms in Swift

Fourth Edition · iOS 15 · Swift 5.5 · Xcode 13

24. Priority Queues
Written by Vincent Ngo

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Queues are simply lists that maintain the order of elements using first-in-first-out (FIFO) ordering. A priority queue is another version of a queue in which elements are dequeued in priority order instead of using FIFO ordering. For example, a priority queue can either be:

  1. Max-priority, in which the element at the front is always the largest.
  2. Min-priority, in which the element at the front is always the smallest.

A priority queue is especially useful when identifying the maximum or minimum value given a list of elements. In this chapter, you will learn the benefits of a priority queue and build one by leveraging the existing queue and heap data structures that you studied in previous chapters.

Applications

Some practical applications of a priority queue include:

  • Dijkstra’s algorithm, which uses a priority queue to calculate the minimum cost.
  • A* pathfinding algorithm, which uses a priority queue to track the unexplored routes that will produce the path with the shortest length.
  • Heap sort, which can be implemented using a priority queue.
  • Huffman coding that builds a compression tree. A min-priority queue is used to repeatedly find two nodes with the smallest frequency that do not yet have a parent node.

These are just some of the use cases, but priority queues have many more applications as well.

Common operations

In Chapter 8, Queues, you established the following protocol for queues:

public protocol Queue {
  associatedtype Element
  mutating func enqueue(_ element: Element) -> Bool
  mutating func dequeue() -> Element?
  var isEmpty: Bool { get }
  var peek: Element? { get }
}

Implementation

You can create a priority queue in the following ways:

struct PriorityQueue<Element: Equatable>: Queue { // 1

  private var heap: Heap<Element> // 2

  init(sort: @escaping (Element, Element) -> Bool,
       elements: [Element] = []) { // 3
    heap = Heap(sort: sort, elements: elements)
  }

  // more to come ...
}
var isEmpty: Bool {
  heap.isEmpty
}

var peek: Element? {
  heap.peek()
}

mutating func enqueue(_ element: Element) -> Bool { // 1
  heap.insert(element)
  return true
}

mutating func dequeue() -> Element? { // 2
  heap.remove()
}

Testing

Add the following to your playground:

var priorityQueue = PriorityQueue(sort: >, elements: [1,12,3,4,1,6,8,7])
while !priorityQueue.isEmpty {
  print(priorityQueue.dequeue()!)
}
12
8
7
6
4
3
1
1

Key points

  • A priority queue is often used to find the element in priority order.
  • It creates a layer of abstraction by focusing on key operations of a queue and leaving out additional functionality provided by the heap data structure.
  • This makes the priority queue’s intent clear and concise. Its only job is to enqueue and dequeue elements, nothing else!
  • Composition for the win!
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