Priority Queue with a find function - Fastest Implementation

Question

I am looking at implementing a priority queue with an added requirement, a find/search function which will tell whether an item is anywhere within the queue. So the functions wi

Answer 1

If your find operation is relatively infrequent (and your heap fairly small), I'd just do a linear search. If it is relatively frequent, or the heap is enormous, consider tracking heap membership (to do your 'find' test) with a separate data structure or an object flag. The joy of external indexing is being able to put your object in as many containers as you like.

If by 'find' you really mean 'find and modify' (I find I often need to delete things from priority queues independently of the typical insert/del-min), here are three approaches I've used:

Given a high rate of insert/del-min (100k/s continuous) and a low rate of find-delete (say 1/s) over a fairly small working set (500-1000) I did a linear search for the element and then deleted it from the tree in the standard way.

Given a high rate of insert/del-min plus fairly frequent find-deletes I simply marked the deleted objects as "uninteresting" after finding them indirectly. The actual free was deferred until the object was dequeued as normal.

Given a small std::priority_queue (which has no access methods outside of insert/del-min) of only a few elements and fairly infrequent deletions, I just copied the entire queue to a temporary std::vector and copied the modified/desired part back into the queue. Then I cried myself to sleep.