Algorithms in C, Parts 1-4: Fundamentals, Data Structures, Sorting, Searching: 4 Bde. [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

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.

Another example: Look at the insertion sort with a sentinel. I am not aware of any other book showing this simple improvement. Also none of the insertion sorts which I saw in the practice use this so tiny add-on sentinel to achieve the quite dramatic speedup of the process.

Naturally, in the time of 700MHz processors here and there a couple of extra instructions might appear unimportant, but I disagree. This is a book showing the basic algorithmics and programming practices in their best, down to the "two liners", regardless what the complexity of the task is. These little "pearls" of coding are in the real world running countless times behind the scenes and are important. Look carefully, learn, master to code as he does!

As a very modern text, this is one of the few books dealing at least with some of the newer algorithms, like the skip lists or sorting networks. Not enough, though. Maybe we will see more in the next volume. There are also some omitions of the basic algorithms, which I would expect to be in such a book. See the rather terse chapter 7.8 about selection methods and look into Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest to see what I mean.

Despite such complaints, in my eyes this book occupies the worlds top-level rank among texts about algorithms for people who really make software and not just call library functions. I cannot wait to get my hands on the next volume being in preparation.

My (standard) point of criticism is that too many exercises are without answers and actually some of them are so complex that a nice chapter with yet some more algorithms would be in place. But almost every book about algorithms has this fault. On the end of a chapter you often see: Improve this, solve that. Its not good enough for a practitioner but it serves purpose for students.

Extraordinary are the illustrations of algorithm visualizations which I like so much in this book.

My tribut to the author to NOT to use the questionable quotes of famous people on the begin of each chapter, as it lately became an annoying habit. One of the worse examples of such a quote were the alleged words of Albert Einstein "make it as simple as possible but not simpler" placed in an book about C++ (what is a contradiction in itself and quite a presumption on authors part putting himself on a pedestal with... Einstein.)

But exactly such a quote might almost be applied to this text. Congratulations Mr. Sedgewick!