On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 3:55 PM, Greg Ewing <greg.ew...@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: >> >> So the question is more: why, with Python being the way it is, do the >> heap functions operate on a list? I think heapq.heapify is the answer: >> in linear time, it heapifies a list *in place*. > > > There's no reason a Heap object couldn't accomodate that > case. E.g. the constructor could optionally accept an > existing list to heapify and wrap. >
Yeah but if it's wrapping an existing list, it's not really constructing a new object. Every other constructor in Python will make something independent of its origin (if you call list() on a list, you get back a brand new copy, for instance), but to take advantage of in-place heapification, it would have to mutate the input. I think that would be even more surprising. ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
