queue

In computer science, a priority queue is an abstract data-type similar to a regular queue or stack data structure in which each element additionally has a "priority" associated with it. In a priority queue, an element with high priority is served before an element with low priority. In some implementations, if two elements have the same priority, they are served according to the order in which they were enqueued; in other implementations ordering of elements with the same priority remains undefined.
While coders often implement priority queues with heaps, they are conceptually distinct from heaps. A priority queue is a concept like "a list" or "a map"; just as a list can be implemented with a linked list or with an array, a priority queue can be implemented with a heap or with a variety of other methods such as an unordered array.

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