Addison Wesley Art of Computer Programming, The, Volumes 1-4B, Boxed Set

I ordered this book last September for a really good deal of €70. At that price, it is an amazing value for money. The book itself is not a lite read, so it sits on my bookshelf for one day when I need it.

I have always wanted to have these books, and it was only the fact that when the new box set (1-4B) was on Amazon at a *very* good price that I could justify buying it! I won't say what the price was when I pre-ordered, but it was a *lot* cheaper than the £200+ currently being charged! I was at University studying for my Computer Science Degree in the late 80s, and this was a reference book that myself and my fellow CS Undergraduates referred to very often - it was a reference book that could only be used within the library itself, it couldn't be removed! Be warned - as you can see from the images I've included, a certain level of mathematics and programming knowledge is required. I've included the complete algorithm for a Quicksort, and at the end you can see the start of the MIX program for this algorithm. MIX is Knuth's hypothetical computer, with the language used being a machine language. As noted in Vol 1, MIX is considered out of date, and a new version (MMIX, MIX 2009) has been developed, and will be used in the next edition of volumes 1-3 (Vols 4a and 4b already use MMIX). Volume 1: "Fundamental Algorithms" (originally published in 1968, updated and revised 3rd edition 1997 - Mathematical Preliminaries - MIX - Information Structures (Lists, Trees, Multilinked Structures, Dynamic Storage Allocations) Volume 2: "Seminumerical Algorithms" (originally published in 1969, updated and revised 3rd edition 1998) - Random Numbers - Arithmetic (Positional Number Systems, Floating Point Arithmetic, Multiple-Precision Arithmetic, Radix Conversion, Rational Arithmetic, Polynomial Arithmetic, Manipulation of Power Series) Volume 3: "Sorting and Searching" (originally published in 1973, updated and revised 2nd edition 1998) - Sorting (Combinatorial Properties of Permutations, Internal Sorting, Optimum Sorting, External Sorting) - Searching (Sequential Searching, Searching by Comparison of Keys, Digital Searching, Hashing, Retrieval on Secondary Keys) Volume 4a: "Combinatorial Algorithms Part 1" (originally published in 2011, first edition) - Combinatorial Serarching (Zeros and Ones, Generating All Possibilities) Volume 4b: "Combinatorial Algorithms Part 2" (new publication, first edition 2023) - Mathematical Preliminaries Redux - Combinatorial Searching (Generating All Possibilities continued - backtrack programming and satisfiability) If you are a programmer, this is the go-to work for algorithms! Forthcoming in the next few years (hopefully) are: - Volumes 4C, 4D: Combinatorial Algorithms ( Generating all possibilities (continued), Shortest paths, Graph algorithms, Graphs and optimization, Independence theory, Independence structures, Efficient matroid algorithms, Discrete dynamic programming, Branch-and-bound techniques, Herculean tasks (aka NP-hard problems), Near-optimization), Recursion [This will complete Knuth's "Core" work] The remaining Volumes are planned for, and form specialist areas, so not part of the "Core" work: - Volume 5 – Syntactic Algorithms (Lexical scanning (includes also string search and data compression), Parsing techniques) - Volume 6 – The Theory of Context-free Languages - Volume 7 – Compiler Techniques

Sem comentários, uma obra essencial para qualquer profissional e acadêmico da área. Um detalhe que vale comentar é que essa versão possui contracapa, eu particularmente não gosto muito, mas para os compradores de plantão, é um ponto a se observar.

The set of books arrived in very good condition. The content itself is a real gem, although the collection is somewhat heavy and not very practical to carry around. The production quality is excellent: sturdy box, solid covers, and everything feels well made and durable.

The classic masterwork. Fortunately, Amazon had priced this very cheaply at under €50 and free delivery. An offer that I could not turn down, even though I already had the first three parts as a Low Price Edition from a visit to India.