Binary heap is a tree-like data structure that generally can be separated into two types: min-heap and max-heap. The difference is that in the max-heap all nodes are greater than or equal to each of it’s children. In the min-heap everything is vise versa, all nodes are less than or equal to each of its children. Thus, the highest (max-heap) or lowest (min-heap) element is always on the top and this is the main advantage which provides possibility to access the min or the max element in constant time. Another important property is that all levels, except the last last one, must be full.
The last level can be either full or not, but all new elements always added to the last level, from the left to the right.
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