Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_heap in particular the 
section on Heap implementation which is directly applicable to the Heap 
class in Squeak. Note that the heap property does not require the heap 
to be totally sorted; the following two Heaps are both valid:

0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

(0 < 1,2; 1 < 3,4; 2 < 5,6)

0 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 2

(0 < 4,1; 4 < 6,5; 1 < 3,2)

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Brett Kosinski wrote:
> This might just belong on the newbies list, but... I'm looking at
> using a Heap for a primarily read-only, sorted set of some objects.
> Now, just to prefix this, I'm assuming the Heap is largely equivalent
> to the SortedCollection, in that it's intended to keep it's items in
> sorted order as they're added, and that accessing those items using
> the #at: selector will retrieve them in their sorted positions.
> 
> So, that said, I have the following little code snippet:
> 
> h := Heap new sortBlock: [ : a : b | a <= b ].  "Just to be explicit"
> r := Random new.
> 
> 1 to: 10 do: [ : i | h add: (r nextInt: 1000000) ].
> 
> h do: [ : i | Transcript show: i; cr ].
> 
> Here's some example output:
> 
> 90436
> 692737
> 206478
> 849361
> 825757
> 704772
> 262508
> 999388
> 971421
> 956498
> 
> It ain't sorted.  So... thoughts? :)
> 
> Brett.
> 
>