Michael Davis wrote:
> 
> Can I make the heap a static or fixed size?  For example, I want the heap to be 2K regardless of how many items it contains.
> 
> Can I marshal dump and load heaps?
> 
> I think this may be just want I need to create a btree for ruby.

No, I don't think there is an easy way to make a heap do these things.
Heaps grow dynamically as new keys are inserted -- there is no way
around this. Why don't you just write a B-tree class? Chapter 19 of
"Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest should
give you enough of a background (and pseudocode) to write a nice Ruby
class.
 
Jon
-- 
_______________________________________________________________________
  Jonathan Aseltine     aseltine / cs.umass.edu     MAS, Umass, Amherst