Can someone please tell me the point of the STL heap function templates like std::make_heap? Why would anyone ever use them? Is there a practical use?
If you want to make a priority queue out from a list, well, you can use make_heap:
Internally, a heap is a tree where each node links to values not greater than its own value. In heaps generated by make_heap, the specific position of an element in the tree rather than being determined by memory-consuming links is determined by its absolute position in the sequence, with *first being always the highest value in the heap.
Heaps allow to add or remove elements from it in logarithmic time by using functions push_heap and pop_heap, which preserve its heap properties.