priority queues (heaps figure result of attaching leftist heap of previous figure as ' right child the merge notice that if the null path length is not updatedthen all null path lengths will be and the heap will not be leftist but merely random in this casethe algorithm will workbut the time bound we will claim will no longer be valid the description of the algorithm translates directly into code the node class (fig is the same as the binary treeexcept that it is augmented with the npl (null path lengthdata member the leftist heap stores pointer to the root as its data member we have seen in that when an element is inserted into an empty binary tree figure result of swapping children of ' root