By end of Aug 2023, the author of this repository decided to abandon GitHub (Microsoft and 2FA shenaningans) and adopt CodeBerg. While not deleted, there is no guarantee the GitHub repo is updated. Check the official repo at: https://codeberg.org/hbecker/TrackingHeaps.jl

Check the complete documentation here: https://henriquebecker91.github.io/TrackingHeaps.jl/latest/

TrackingHeaps offers a heap with a tracking system for the stored values.

Inserting a value into a TrackingHeap returns a tracker for the value. The tracker can be used to access, update, and delete the value without searching for it first. Heap order do not allow for O(log m) search (where m is the number of values currently stored inside the heap), just for O(m) search, so this feature allow for some performance gain if you need to manipulate values anywhere in the heap (not just on top of the heap). Besides access, which is O(1), update and delete are O(log m) as they may need to rebalance the tree.

If the tracking system is not needed, there is little reason to use this heap.

I wrote this package because the MutableBinaryHeap of DataStructures.jl did not allow some behavior I wanted; behavior as:

1. a non-top value can be deleted without being made top first;
2. convenience methods allow to pop!/delete! stored values and immediatelly track! others, avoiding double-rebalancing;
3. after a value is deleted, its tracker can be re-reused to re-insert that value or insert a new value (but this is not done automatically);
4. the arity of the heap (binary, trinary, etc..) can be defined by the user (by parametric type) and inccur in minimal overhead (I hope);
5. all the stored values are in a Vector{V} in heap order, for easy backdoor/hacking access;
6. the integer type that is the tracker type can be defined by the user.

A soft introduction to the package will be written here in the future.