You really need to decide on one way to do it. It's a choice between map and vector and either will work.
If the priority is the key, a map would work by itself, because it would order the strings internally by their priority.So putting my pairs into the vector would "build the heap"
or do I need to store the mapping elements into the vector and then "build a heap".
If you decided to use a vector in the priority queue class, you would have to make an algorithm to build a heap. That means reordering the elements in the array such that they conform to the heap property: i.e., heap sort.A sub question, is can I take my struct as white flags demonstrated, make a vector from within my priority queue class and then transmit the information/updates... or am I waaaaaaaaayyyyy offfffff?