No label defined (Q4023849)

Algorithms (and data structures) belong to the fundamentals of computer science. The author presents a broad variety of important and useful algorithms, trying to concentrate on their essential characteristics. Algorithms and data structures depend on each other. In ``Algorithms in C'' data structures are seen as byproducts or endproducts of algorithms, and thus are discussed in order to understand the algorithms. Often different algorithms are available to solve the same problem and the choice of the best of them can be a very complicated task. The careful discussion of algorithms analysis in this book is remarkable and helpful to find adequate programs for a lot of practical problems. The 460 pages of the book are divided in 8 parts and 45 chapters. The variety of topics reaches from sorting and searching, via string processing, geometry, graphs and mathematics to more advanced topics like parallelism, dynamic programming and the theory of algorithms. All parts are extensive. String processing for example contains chapters about parsing, file compression and cryptology. At the end of each part there is a reference list for further readings. And for each part exactly ten exercises are given. It's a little pity that there does not exist any solution to these exercises, so there is no control of the success in understanding the text. The algorithms are presented in the C language and the author mentions a Pascal version of the book. All computer languages have advantages and disadvantages. C is used because of its availability on nearly all modern computers. But the book is not intended to be a C tutorial. The language only serves as a tool for formulating the algorithms and only a small subset of the language is used. To read this book with profit, readers should have experience in programming in high and low level languages. Some exposure to elementary algorithms on simple data structures such as arrays, stacks, queues and trees is helpful. An elementary acquaintance with machine organization, programming languages and other basic computer science concepts is also needed. A few of the application areas require knowledge of elementary calculus, including linear algebra, geometry and discrete mathematics. The text is supported by a lot of graphical representations and the book is written in a clear and understandable language. It is well designed, and I could not find any misprints. A broad spectrum of very fundamental themes is presented in great detail, so the book can be recommended especially for students of computer science and related disciplines as a textbook about algorithms, algorithms construction and algorithms analysis.