Heap (data structure)

In computer science, a heap is a specialized tree-based data structure which is essentially an almost complete binary tree that satisfies the heap property: in a max heap, for any given node C, if P is a parent node of C, then the key (the value) of P is greater than or equal to the key of C. In a min heap, the key of P is less than or equal to the key of C. The node at the “top” of the heap (with no parents) is called the root node.
— Wikipedia

Heap is a special type of binary tree with specific criteria:

• it’s an almost complete binary tree
• values of each node must be no greater (or less) than value of its child nodes.

Example of a binary max-heap with node keys being integers between 1 and 100