The major difference between a binary heap and a red-black tree is the performance on certain operations:
Heap Pros
- It makes an ideal priority queue, since the min/max element (depending on your implementation) is always
O(1)
access time, so no need to search for it. - It’s also very fast for insertion of new values –
O(1)
on average,O(log n)
worst case.
Heap Cons
- Slow searches
O(n)
for random elements.
RB Tree Pros
- Better searching
O(log n)
and good insertionO(log n)
performance.
RB Tree Cons
- Slower min/max searches.
- More overhead in general.