i Have been playing around with STL containers and the compare function/functors they supports, however i found priority_queue doesn't follow the usual strict weak ordering , i am trying to understand what might be the reason but not able to figure it out, any pointers would be helpful.
It also mentioned in this blog that priority_queue doesnt follow strict weak ordering. enter link description here
#include "STL.h"
#include "queue"
#include "vector"
#include "iostream"
#include "functional"
using namespace std;
typedef bool(*func)(const int& val1 , const int& val2);
bool strict_weak_order_function(const int& val1 , const int& val2){
return val1 > val2;
}
bool comparer_function(const int& val1 , const int& val2){
return !strict_weak_order_function(val1 , val2);
}
struct Compaper_functor{
bool operator()(const int& val1 , const int& val2){
return !strict_weak_order_function(val1 , val2);
}
};
void runPriorityQueue(void){
//priority_queue<int , vector<int> , func > pq(comparer_function);
priority_queue<int , vector<int> , Compaper_functor > pq;
int size;
cin >> size;
while(size--){
int val;
cin >> val;
pq.push(val);
}
while(!pq.empty()){
cout <<'\n'<< pq.top() << '\n';
pq.pop();
}
}
The problem is that the negation of your strict_weak_order
(that uses >
) is <=
and that is not a strict weak order. A strict weak order R
has to satisfy x R x == false
for all x
. However, R
equal to <=
yields (x <= x) == true
.
You need to reverse the order of arguments (which corresponds to <
) instead.
bool comparer_function(const int& val1 , const int& val2){
return strict_weak_order_function(val2 , val1);
}
struct Compaper_functor{
bool operator()(const int& val1 , const int& val2){
return strict_weak_order_function(val2 , val1);
}
};
Note however that a std::priority_queue
has a std::less
as default comparator, but that gives a max-heap (i.e. [5, 4, 3, 2, 1]
output from the same input), so to get a min-heap (i.e. with output [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
from input [5, 4, 3, 2, 1]
) you need to pass std::greater
, see e.g. this:
#include <queue>
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
auto const v = std::vector<int> { 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 };
// prints 5 through 1
for (auto p = std::priority_queue<int> { v.begin(), v.end() }; !p.empty(); p.pop())
std::cout << p.top() << ',';
std::cout << '\n';
// prints 1 through 5
for (auto p = std::priority_queue<int, std::vector<int>, std::greater<int>> { v.begin(), v.end() }; !p.empty(); p.pop())
std::cout << p.top() << ',';
std::cout << '\n';
}