[Python-ideas] Adding a thin wrapper class around the functions in stdlib.heapq

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 17:11:53 +1100
Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 3:55 PM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> > Chris Angelico wrote:  
> >>
> >> So the question is more: why, with Python being the way it is, do the
> >> heap functions operate on a list? I think heapq.heapify is the answer:
> >> in linear time, it heapifies a list *in place*.  
> >
> >
> > There's no reason a Heap object couldn't accomodate that
> > case. E.g. the constructor could optionally accept an
> > existing list to heapify and wrap.
> >  
> 
> Yeah but if it's wrapping an existing list, it's not really
> constructing a new object. Every other constructor in Python will make
> something independent of its origin (if you call list() on a list, you
> get back a brand new copy, for instance), but to take advantage of
> in-place heapification, it would have to mutate the input. I think
> that would be even more surprising.

In any case, copying a list a pretty cheap, so in-place heapification
isn't a very important optimization.

Regards

Antoine.