I am curious about the use of std::greater.
When used with sort
, it outputs the numbers in descending order. But when used with priority_queue
, numbers are output in ascending order. Why so?
Example:
#include <iostream> // std::cout
#include <functional> // std::greater
#include <algorithm> // std::sort
#include <queue> // std::priority_queue
int main () {
int numbers[]={20,40,50,10,30};
std::priority_queue<int, std::vector<int>, std::greater<int>> pq (numbers, numbers+5);
std::sort(numbers, numbers + 5, std::greater<int>());
while(!pq.empty()){
std:: cout << pq.top() << ' ';
pq.pop();
}
std::cout << '\n';
for (int i=0; i<5; i++)
std::cout << numbers[i] << ' ';
return 0;
}
The output of above code is:
10 20 30 40 50
50 40 30 20 10
Or similar lines,
std::priority_queue<int, std::vector<int>, std::greater<int> >
creates a min heap whereas std::priority_queue<int, std::vector<int>, std::less<int> >
creates a max heap. Could have been the other way round. Why is it so?