Assign4: Priority Queue

Due Tuesday, July 27 at 11:59 pm

After spending the first half of CS106B diligently learning how to use data structures to accomplish very cool and powerful things, the time has come to implement your very own data structure!

The focus of this assignment is on implementing the Priority Queue class, a variation on the standard queue which allows for slightly more complex ordering behavior based on relative priority of different elements. After a valuable debugging exercise that will teach you about some powerful debugging tools and some of the dangers of working with dynamic memory, you will work on completing two different implementations of a priority queue class. The first implementation will be backed by an array of sorted elements and the second will be backed by a binary heap. In between, you will also analyze and write some "client" code to make use of your brand new data structures, which will help you reason about some of the benefits and drawbacks of the different underlying data organization techiques that you will be utilizing. Onward!

This assignment is to be completed individually. Working in pairs/groups is not permitted.

Learning goals

Assignment parts

This assignment consists of a warmup debugging exercise and three programming tasks involving the priority queue data structure.

Please note that unlike in previous assignments, the three programming tasks are not equal when it comes to the amount of work being asked of you. In particular, the first two priority queue tasks consist of implementing one function each; the last task (PQHeap) involves designing a full class implementation involving eight different functions. Please have this in mind when designing your plan of attack for the assignment!

Getting started

We provide a ZIP of the starter project. Download the zip, extract the files, and double-click the .pro file to open the project in Qt Creator.

📦 Starter code

The source files you will edit are pqsortedarray.h/.cpp, pqclient.cpp, and pqheap.h/.cpp.

Additionally, you will answer questions in short_answer.txt.

Before getting started writing code, we highly recommend reading the CS106B Style Guide. All of your assignment submissions this quarter will be graded on their coding style, and this guide contains the coding standards that make up our style rubric.

Helpful Resources

Here are some resources that you might find helpful for this assignment:

Getting help

Working very closely with raw memory and implemeting your own classes can get very tricky! We always recommend drawing lots of diagrams and making use of the debugger whenever possible. As always, we're here to help you if you get stuck. You can contact us on Ed, email your section leader, or stop by the virtual LaIR (here is the schedule of help hours). You can find more information about how to get help at the LaIR here. As a reminder, try to visit the LaIR for code debugging questions – however, if you cannot make it to the LaIR due to timezone issues, you can post on Ed to get help. However, you must use a private post if you are including code so that you are not posting your solutions for the whole class to see.

Submit

Before you call it done, run through our submission checklist to be sure all your ts are crossed and is dotted. Then upload your completed files for grading to the Paperless website.

Please submit only the files you edited; for this assignment, these files will be

🏁 Submit to Paperless

Note: When submitting to Paperless, due dates are expressed in PDT.