Heaplike

Heaplike is an adjective in computer science used to describe structures or mechanisms that resemble a heap, especially the heap data structure or the memory heap. It signals informal resemblance rather than formal designation.

In the heap data structure sense, a heap is a nearly complete binary tree with the heap property: a node's key is no smaller than its children's in a max-heap, or no greater in a min-heap. Arrays are the common implementation; operations include insert and extract-min/max, both in O(log n). Heaps support efficient access to the extreme element and are used to implement priority queues, event simulation, and certain graph algorithms.

Variants include binary heaps, d-ary heaps, and more advanced structures such as binomial and Fibonacci heaps, which change amortized costs for sequences of operations. The term heaplike may apply when a structure behaves like a heap or supports heap-type operations without strict binary-heap constraints.

In memory management, the heap is a region of dynamic memory. Heaplike allocators manage free blocks with free lists, coalescing, or garbage collection, enabling dynamic allocation and deallocation outside the stack.

The term signals informal resemblance and is common in descriptions of data structures or memory systems that preserve heap characteristics, particularly the partial order and efficient access to the top element.