substantially fewer array-element compares. This is best practice as of
Kntuh Volume 3 Ed 2, and the code is actually simpler this way (although
the key idea may be counter-intuitive at first glance! breaking out of
a loop early loses when it costs more to try to get out early than getting
out early saves).
Also added a comment block explaining the difference and giving some real
counts; demonstrating that heapify() is more efficient than repeated
heappush(); and emphasizing the obvious point thatlist.sort() is more
efficient if what you really want to do is sort.
Added new heapify() function, which transforms an arbitrary list into a
heap in linear time; that's a fundamental tool for using heaps in real
life <wink>.
Added heapyify() test. Added a "less naive" N-best algorithm to the test
suite, and noted that this could actually go much faster (building on
heapify()) if we had max-heaps instead of min-heaps (the iterative method
is appropriate when all the data isn't known in advance, but when it is
known in advance the tradeoffs get murkier).
Fred Drake
Raymond Hettinger
Tim Peters
Guido van Rossum