Customer Reviews

Art of Computer Programming, Volume 3: Sorting and Searching (2nd Edition)

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

First the basics: it's great, it provides wide-ranging and deep analysis, it shows many views and variants of each problem, and its bibliography is helpful, though not exhaustive. The historical notes, including sorts for drum storage, may seem quaint to modern readers. And sorting has been done, right? You just run a shell program or call a function, and tap into the best technology. Does it need to be done again?

Yes, if you're on the edge of technology, it does need to be done again, and again, and again. That's because technology keeps expanding, and violating old assumptions as it does. Memories got big enough that the million-record sort is now a yawn, where it used to be a journal article. But, at the same time, processor clocks got 100-1000x ahead of memory speeds. All of a sudden, those drum-based algorithms are worth another look, because yesteryear's drum:memory ratios are a lot like today's memory:cache ratios of size and speed - and who doesn't want a 100x speedup? Parallel processing is moving from the supercomputing elite into laptops, causing more tremors in the ground rules. GPU and reconfigurable computing also open whole new realms of pitfalls as well as opportunities.

Knuth points out that the analyses have beauty in themselves, for people with eyes to see it. His analyses also demonstrate techniques applicable way beyond the immediate discussion, too. Today, though, I have nasty problems in technologies that no one really knows how to handle very well. I have to go back and check all the assumptions again, since so many of them changed. If that's the kind of problem you have, too, then this is the place to start.

//wiredweird

This book in a keystone work of computer science. Now and then one needs a "binary search" or a related algorithm, and Knuth's book has it. Such algorithms, although basic, are notoriously easy to get wrong. The style of writing requires the reader to have some mathematics and programming background. Otherwise a reader will need to study the writing style and algorithm description. Computer Scientists are waiting for this skilled practitioner to finish his life's work, namely Vols. 4-7. Let us hope the author has the patience and time to accomplish it.

This book is bible of computer programming.

It contains most detailed explanation of searching and sorting methods I ever found in a book. Contains all internal sorting and searching and external sorting and searching algorithms.

The only drawback of the book is that all algorithms are written in MIX - some kind of assembler, and because of that they are hard to read.

I just bought the book I needed out of the set. I needed to build a database that did not use any commercial package (this gives full access and no royalties). This book saved my bacon. I almost did not buy it when all I saw in it was math. But I was desperate and it paid off. Turns out you could not explain it any other way. This book goes way beyond binary, and bubble sorts. I use it primarily for balanced trees. I may try some thing more exotic later. I can not tell you about the other volumes but this one will defiantly pay for its self.

Art of Computer Programming, The, Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set (2nd Edition) (The Art of Computer Programming Series) (Vol 1-3)

As a previous review said: "This is a book about the science of algorithms. Algorithms are either right or wrong."

Knuth uses the MIX programming language throughout, and if you hope to learn programming by reading this book, you should look elsewhere. Maybe someday we'll have 2^32 registers, but we will still be trying to make our programs work faster on this, as yet, uninvented architecture. The fundamental concepts will remain the same, and people will still be reading Knuth to understand them.

A good reference for serious computer science students. Others should look at O'Reilly. They have some really good books on visual basic.

This is an encyclopedia of what is known about sorting and searching and what computers can do. It is nothing else.

Graduate students in computer science (especially those in theory, algorithms and the occasional compiler fan) will benefit. Hackers and script kiddies will probably not benefit from this book.

Excellent reference.

However, I didn't like the idea of using MIX assembly language. Book would have been more readable if examples were in plain english pseudocode (even better would be 'C'). At least second edition should have taken care of this aspect.

I also suggest books from Cormen & Sedgewick on same subject.

The book is quite beneficial for all programmers in all ages. Not only the foundations of the programmer be improved, some techniques are also introduced in the best fashion yet

As the inventor of numerous algorithms described in Prof. Knuth's Vol. 3, 1st edition, I am very interested in his 2nd edition, when available. My 1956 MIT thesis, "Information Sorting in the Application of Electronic Digital Computers to Business Operations," was very well treated in his first edition in 1973. I anxiously await his 2nd.