Priority Queues

• A priority queue collects elements, each of which has a priority
• Example: collection of work requests, some of which may be more urgent than others
• When removing an element, element with highest priority is retrieved
  • Customary to give low values to high priorities, with priority 1 denoting the highest priority
• Standard Java library supplies a PriorityQueue class
• A data structure called heap is very suitable for implementing priority queues