Golang program to create a priority queue

A priority queue is a type of queue in which priorities are assigned to the elements and the elements with higher priority are popped out first than the elements with lower priority.

In this article, we will write Golang programs to create a priority queue. They can be implemented using heaps, slices, trees etc and are used to perform the operations such as pushing elements in queue and removing elements from queue.

Syntax

func make ([] type, size, capacity)

The make function in go language is used to create an array/map it accepts the type of variable to be created, its size and capacity as arguments

func append(slice, element_1, element_2…, element_N) []T

The append function is used to add values to an array slice. It takes number of arguments. The first argument is the array to which we wish to add the values followed by the values to add. The function then returns the final slice of array containing all the values.

func len(v Type) int

The len() function is used to get the length of a any parameter. It takes one parameter as the data type variable whose length we wish to find and returns the integer value which is the length of the variable.

Algorithm

• Step 1 − Create an Item struct with three fields named value of the item of type string, priority of the item of type int and index of the item of type int

• Step 2 − Then, create a PriorityQueue type as a slice of Item with a pointer pointing to it

• Step 3 − Implement the Len() method, Less() method, Swap() method, Push() Method, Pop() Method.

• Step 4 − Finally, implement update method to update the priority and the value of the queue elements

• Step 5 − In the main, create an empty priority queue, piq, of the type PriorityQueue

• Step 6 − In this step, push items into the priority queue using the Push() function from the heap package and update the priority of an item using the Update() method of the PriorityQueue.

• Step 7 − Here, pop items from the priority queue from the heap package until the queue is empty. Print the value and priority of each popped item.

Example 1

In this example, we will write a Golang program to create a priority queue using a binary heap. The slice of items will be created as pointers pointing to it.

package main

import (
   "container/heap"
   "fmt"
)
type Item struct {
   value    string 
   priority int    
   index    int   
}

type PriorityQueue []*Item
func (piq PriorityQueue) Len() int {
   return len(piq)
}
func (piq PriorityQueue) Less(i, j int) bool {
   
   return piq[i].priority > piq[j].priority
}
func (piq PriorityQueue) Swap(i, j int) {
   piq[i], piq[j] = piq[j], piq[i]
   piq[i].index = i
   piq[j].index = j
}
func (piq *PriorityQueue) Push(x interface{}) {
   n := len(*piq)
   item := x.(*Item)
   item.index = n
   *piq = append(*piq, item)
}
func (piq *PriorityQueue) Pop() interface{} {
   old := *piq
   n := len(old)
   item := old[n-1]
   item.index = -1 
   *piq = old[0 : n-1]
   return item
}
func (piq *PriorityQueue) Update(item *Item, value string, priority int) {
   item.value = value
   item.priority = priority
   heap.Fix(piq, item.index)
}
func main() {
   piq := make(PriorityQueue, 0)
   
   heap.Push(&piq, &Item{value: "Item 1", priority: 30})
   heap.Push(&piq, &Item{value: "Item 2", priority: 10})
   heap.Push(&piq, &Item{value: "Item 3", priority: 20})

   item := piq[2]
   piq.Update(item, item.value, 40)
   
   for piq.Len() > 0 {
      item := heap.Pop(&piq).(*Item)
      fmt.Printf("Value: %s, Priority: %d\n", item.value, item.priority)
   }
}

Output

Value: Item 3, Priority: 40
Value: Item 1, Priority: 30
Value: Item 2, Priority: 10

Example 2

In this example, we will write a Golang program to implement a priority queue using a slice of Item struct.

package main

import (
   "fmt"
)
type Item struct {
   value    string 
   priority int    
}
type PriorityQueue []Item
func (piq PriorityQueue) Len() int {
   return len(piq)
}
func (piq PriorityQueue) Less(i, j int) bool {
   
   return piq[i].priority > piq[j].priority
}
func (piq PriorityQueue) Swap(i, j int) {
   piq[i], piq[j] = piq[j], piq[i]
}
func (piq *PriorityQueue) Push(x interface{}) {
   item := x.(Item)
   *piq = append(*piq, item)
}
func (piq *PriorityQueue) Pop() interface{} {
   old := *piq
   n := len(old)
   item := old[n-1]
   *piq = old[0 : n-1]
   return item
}
func main() {
   piq := make(PriorityQueue, 0)

   
   piq.Push(Item{value: "Item 1", priority: 30})
   piq.Push(Item{value: "Item 2", priority: 10})
   piq.Push(Item{value: "Item 3", priority: 20})
 
   for piq.Len() > 0 {
      item := piq.Pop().(Item)
      fmt.Printf("Value: %s, Priority: %d\n", item.value, item.priority)
   }
}

Output

Value: Item 3, Priority: 20
Value: Item 2, Priority: 10
Value: Item 1, Priority: 3

Conclusion

In this article we compiled and executed the program of creating a priority queue using two examples. In the first example we used a heap to create a “priorityqueue” and in the second example we used slice and custom functions. Priority queue can be used in task scheduling, huffman coding, dijkstra's algorithm and many more.