tye, a very busy man, responded in the CB that Heap::Simple, thanks to a feature patch added by him, was a better alternative. He went on to indicate an unfinished module of his, Data::Heap, would make it even simpler. Since he didn't believe he would get to reply in a timely manner, I am posting here on his behalf since I believe it has value to the discussion. Depending on how you look at Heaps, this is an answer to one of the last two bullets.