A generic priority queue for Python

You can use Queue.PriorityQueue.

Recall that Python isn't strongly typed, so you can save anything you like: just make a tuple of (priority, thing) and you're set.

When using a priority queue, decrease-key is a must-have operation for many algorithms (Dijkstra's Algorithm, A*, OPTICS), I wonder why Python's built-in priority queue does not support it. None of the other answers supply a solution that supports this functionality.

A priority queue which also supports decrease-key operation is this implementation by Daniel Stutzbach worked perfectly for me with Python 3.5.

from heapdict import heapdict

hd = heapdict()
hd["two"] = 2
hd["one"] = 1
obj = hd.popitem()
print("object:",obj[0])
print("priority:",obj[1])

# object: one
# priority: 1

I ended up implementing a wrapper for heapq, adding a dict for maintaining the queue's elements unique. The result should be quite efficient for all operators:

class PriorityQueueSet(object):

    """
    Combined priority queue and set data structure.

    Acts like a priority queue, except that its items are guaranteed to be
    unique. Provides O(1) membership test, O(log N) insertion and O(log N)
    removal of the smallest item.

    Important: the items of this data structure must be both comparable and
    hashable (i.e. must implement __cmp__ and __hash__). This is true of
    Python's built-in objects, but you should implement those methods if you
    want to use the data structure for custom objects.
    """

    def __init__(self, items=[]):
        """
        Create a new PriorityQueueSet.

        Arguments:
            items (list): An initial item list - it can be unsorted and
                non-unique. The data structure will be created in O(N).
        """
        self.set = dict((item, True) for item in items)
        self.heap = self.set.keys()
        heapq.heapify(self.heap)

    def has_item(self, item):
        """Check if ``item`` exists in the queue."""
        return item in self.set

    def pop_smallest(self):
        """Remove and return the smallest item from the queue."""
        smallest = heapq.heappop(self.heap)
        del self.set[smallest]
        return smallest

    def add(self, item):
        """Add ``item`` to the queue if doesn't already exist."""
        if item not in self.set:
            self.set[item] = True
            heapq.heappush(self.heap, item)

A generic priority queue for Python

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