Data structures and algorithms, by A. Aho, J. Hopcroft, and J. Ullman, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1983, 427 pp. Price: $28.85

✍ Scribed by Dan Gusfield

• Book ID: 102544524
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1985
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 157 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0028-3045
• DOI: 10.1002/net.3230150111

✦ Synopsis

Ullman, is best described as a rewritten first half of the authors' earlier book, The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms (Addison-Wesley, 1974). The earlier book is a classic and is one of the standard references used by computer scientists in this area. However, a common criticism of the authors' earlier book is that it is difficult t o use as an undergraduate text: its pace is t o o fast and it assumes too much mathematical sophistication. Data Structures and Algorithms is a response to this criticism. It covers most of the material in the first half of the earlier book, adds some new material, and is written with a style and pace that make it well suited for a semester-long computer science course a t the sophomore or junior level. The book covers fundamental topics in data structures, sorting, graphs and graph algorithms, step counting analysis of algorithms, design methodologies for efficient algorithms, and external storage and memory management. All but the last two topics are contained in the earlier book; the last two topics are applications of the fundamental techniques and are apparently included because of their practical importance.

The book follows a top-down methodological view of programming, data structures, and the design of computer algorithms. The most fundamental part of this methodology is the current practice in computer science of separating the function of a data structure from its computer implementation. The functional form of a data structure is called a n Abstract Data Type (ADT), which is a mathematical model together with operations that act on it. For example, a List is an ADT; Insert, Locate, Retrieve,