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Algorithms in C, Parts 1-4: Fundamentals, Data Structures, Sorting, Searching (3rd Edition)

Algorithms in C, Parts 1-4: Fundamentals, Data Structures, Sorting, Searching (3rd Edition)

List Price: $57.99
Your Price: $57.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Get it.
Review: A major improvement over previous editions. Mathematical computation is used sparingly and then only when needed. This book is a good blend of theory and practicality. It gives the programmer what he needs now! This book is part 1 of a 2 part series and covers the most important data structures and how to use them. Part 2 will cover more complex issues. You should have these books to supplement your other algorithm books. They will help to clarify some specific topics.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: nothing new
Review: As a student in comp. sc. i have seen a lot of books on algorithms and i really wouldn't buy this one yet. we used it for a class and there were quite a few bugs in the supplied code. Sedgewick is a good author but i would wait for the next edition without the bugs

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Buy it - Read it - Read it again
Review: Do you want to know how your C code is compiled? How Unix turns it into a process?

This book will answer these questions, and a lot more.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: ERRONIOUS CODE!!! How can you trust the rest of the book?
Review: Errors start right from the beginning with code listing 1.2 ( three errors in four liner) and goes on with ambiguous coding style. Even for a junior programmer it won't be proper to make his code public with such an errors.

If you want to debug authors code for free, this is the book for you. However, considering that it is third edition already and errors are still there, the author probably won't care much if you correct it anyway. Or does he? Yes, I was frustrated, wasting two hours of beautiful Saturday morning on scraping supposedly impeccable code.

His acclaimed teacher Dr. Knuth was smarter providing code in `toy' language that nobody use, test or bother to correct even for $1K, but he at least never promised to provide you any useful code.

In general, easy readable text, good style, much better than some other books, but yet, superfluous coverage of algorithms analysis. It would have been less misleading if author drops `in C' for something implementation independent. But on the contrary, the author went on with 'in C++', 'in Java'. Given the pattern of lax coding here, I wonder are those books just as 'slippery'.

As for algorithms in C, I think that even the related parts of "Introductory C" by Petersen will be more useful. It works there.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: ERRONIOUS CODE!!! How can you trust the rest of the book?
Review: Errors start right from the beginning with code listing 1.2 ( three errors in four liner) and goes on with ambiguous coding style. Even for a junior programmer it won't be proper to make his code public with such an errors.

If you want to debug authors code for free, this is the book for you. However, considering that it is third edition already and errors are still there, the author probably won't care much if you correct it anyway. Or does he? Yes, I was frustrated, wasting two hours of beautiful Saturday morning on scraping supposedly impeccable code.

His acclaimed teacher Dr. Knuth was smarter providing code in 'toy' language that nobody use, test or bother to correct even for $1K, but he at least never promised to provide you any useful code.

In general, easy readable text, good style, much better than some other books, but yet, superfluous coverage of algorithms analysis. It would have been less misleading if author drops 'in C' for something implementation independent. But on the contrary, the author went on with 'in C++', 'in Java'. Given the pattern of lax coding here, I wonder are those books just as 'slippery'.

As for algorithms in C, I think that even the related parts of "Introductory C" by Petersen will be more useful. It works there.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fairly good rewrite of a classic
Review: I have always counted on Sedgewick for the best DS&A books. My older copy is so thumbed that I can find sections just by marks on the side. In this new edition the book has been updated - seems a bit easier to dig through - and some mistakes were corrected (although some new one were inserted). Overall, the best on the block for DS&A.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Answers to exercises (at least half of them), please!
Review: I have decided that authors that are not willing to provide detailed solutions to at least the odd-numbered exercises are not worth reading. Why? Because first, where is the evidence that they know the answers to the exercises they present? But more importantly, how is the reader supposed to actually learn from the exercises if he can't see at least one possible solution and the rationale for that solution? This is the same reason why the Deitel & Deitel books are unacceptable. This isn't college anymore. Let's have some answers...if we knew how to do all this stuff already, we wouldn't need the book!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A good overview of algorithms...
Review: I haven't been into algorithms and such things for very long, and yet I find that, with a bit of patience and good will, it's not that hard to understand, contrary to some other review. Of course, it's a long book, but then, if you can't be perseverant enough to read such a book, the best solution is just to stay home and do something else! If you want the information given in the book, you're jolly well goning to have to read it!

I found this book a very good introduction to algorithms. Of course, as it's a very vast subject, some things were not covered quite as much as some may desire, but this book studies sorting and searching very extensivly, as well as string matching, geometric and mathematical algorithms. It also talks about other subjects such as crytography, data compression, etc, but these are less explained. At any rate, for such subjects as are not fully detailed(in fact, for all subjects), there are references to other books upon the subject.

I think this is a very good book to begin with, because it reaches a compromise between completeness and rigourous mathematical dealing of subjects on the one hand, and readability on the other. It gives explainations about the fundamentals of algorithmics, gives and extensively explains the basic, widely used algorithms, while giving the beginner a view of a wide variety of other subjects, which he can then further investigate if he so desires. After a book such as this, one could very well go onto very advanced algorithmic topics in some very specific field.

And yet, again, it leads you through it step by step so that it fully available to the motivated reader.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Why do people like this book?
Review: It is strange to me why some people love this book so much. Admittedly, Sedgewick is very respected in his field and knows a lot about sorting algorithms, but his book is still dissapointing and very frustrating to read for a beginning computer science student. He seldom includes complete code in his examples, and where there is code, there are sometimes errors in the code.

This reviewer took Sedgewick's class at Princeton University where this book was the required text, and not only was the text poor, his lectures were terribly boring. He himself even recognized that there were errors in his book, and so he allowed his students and TA's to submit errors found in the book. At the end of the year, the list of references to mistakes in the book took up more than three pages.

This review is not the result of a student upset about his grade (an A is fine with me), but is rather an attempt to warn students about the potential pitfalls that may be encountered in reading Sedgewick's book. I suppose this could be a great book for an intermediate or advanced CS student who doesn't mind the sparse and sometimes erroneous code or the terse language used to describe fairly complex ideas. Also, there are some parts of the book that are well written and a pleasure to read. However, I would never recomend this book to anyone interested in learning algorithms for this first time without a fair amount of prior programming experience.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: THE place for standard methods - but just half the way
Review: It's a great book. Things are explained fine and it is usable in practice too. But take care, it is just the first 4 parts. Graphical algorithms are not included and I wanted to take a look at those.


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