Explain Heaps and Implement | Dataford Interview Questions

Describe the heap (priority queue) data structure and implement it (e.g. insert and supporting operations).

Asked in the technical phone screen stage. This was a 45-minute online technical interview with a Verily engineer, with approximately 20 minutes allocated to describing and implementing a heap.

Contract

Implement heap_operations(operations). Each operation is ['insert', value], ['peek'], or ['extract_min']. Return the values produced by peek and extract_min, in order. Inputs will not peek or extract from an empty heap.

Constraints

0 <= operations.length <= 10^4
Each operation is an insert, peek, or extract_min operation
insert values are integers in the range -10^9 to 10^9
peek and extract_min are called only when the heap is nonempty

Function Signature

def heap_operations(operations):

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