Customer Reviews

Data Abstraction and Problem Solving with C++: Walls and Mirrors (4th Edition)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

This book does an excellent job of intorducing the mechanics of Data structures. A very useful book to refresh one's knowledge about data structures and get a rigororus insight in the subject in preparation for advanced studies in the area of Data Structures.

Good book for an introductory University course in Data Structures. This bok has been successfully used (and is still being used) as a standard textbook in an intro course in Data Structures at UT Austin

Prerequisites: Atleast 1 introductory programming course in any high level language (preferrably C++). A decent knowledge of C++. (no need of OOP knowledge). Reader should be prepared to seriously study this book. This is a full blown ACADEMIC book, not a tutoorial

This book is one of the best of its kind that I have read.
It is very descriptive and contains a lot of good examples on the subjects.
It describes the construction of a lot of the collection classes like lists, trees, queues etc. and how this is most efficiently sorted and structured.
Other subjects are graphs, the Big "O" Notation for evaluation of algorithm performance and a very good description on how and when to use recursion (The mirrors).
All subjects are described in detail with great examples.
To further test if the subjects have been understood a self-test section is at the end of each chapter (and the answers are in the back of book).
The reader of the book should have some knowledge of object-oriented design, but besides that the code is fairly easy to read.
In short it's a buy.

If you want to learn data structures, this book has lots of good information. In fact, my university uses this book for its data structures class. This book also uses c++ but no STL. It would be nice to have STL since we want the code to be reusable for any objects.

"Algorithms and Data Structures" is a huge field.
Lot of algorithms and data structures are used in todays computer software of variuos types. Not all data structures or algorithms on them are adequate for solving a particular problem, so you must have some skills to say which one is "better" than another in your particular situation. Despite it's name, this book is an almost complete reference to achieve this skills.

"This is great book!!!!" I like it. ( ^.')

I used this book for CPS 272 at Washtenaw Community College and found it very clear. The explanations are thorough and very understandable, and the example code is the clearest code I have ever seen (is this really C++?!). When I transfered to the University of Michigan, I used "Data Structures, Algorithms, and Applications in C++" by Sartjai Sahni for EECS 380, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. I found myself constantly referring back to Carrano's text. The only thing I have against it is that it doesn't cover algorithm efficiency and big-O notation well enough, but I have no hesitation giving it 5 stars.

I would not recommend this book to beginners but this book is definately a good book for people with some programming foundation. Advanced data structures are well explained. We are using this book at school and I am totally comfortable with it. I can actually accomplish something that I've never been able to. On thing that reader need to understand is this book is mostly concentrated on advanced data structure concept. Some reviewers said that it is mostly psudocode and it is true because the author is trying to let you understand the concept of advanced programming. Anyway, this book is a good step stone for you to reach highest programming concepts and skills.

If you want to learn about data structures, then get this book; you won't find a better one. But you'll need a good grip on the C++ language to take full advantage of this book. Don't make the mistake of thinking that this book will also teach you C++. The book is written to teach you data structures; and hopefully you'll pickup some good design habits along the way.

This book is very well written. The language is very clear, but the topic is rather dense. You need to read, then think, then read again.

Many of the examples in the book are given in Pseudo-code. I like that. It makes it easy to follow the logic of the author and figure out how to code it yourself. It doesn't "give" you the answers.

The Section on recursion is basic, but good (think standard "Hanoi Towers"). The section on Algorithm Efficiency and Sorting is very well done...

Overall, I have not looked at too many of these books, so don't necessarily take my review as authoritative. All I can say is that the language and presentation of the topics in this book is very clear and understandable...

This is a great book! Not for novices in C++, but if you already know the fundamentals of the language, this book will be great to learn data structures. Excellent book, indeed.

This book is a great book to learn data structures. The book should not be read by the absolute beginner and you should have a solid C++ foundation. I used this book for a distance learning data structures class and found every chapter to be well written. The book explains everything in great detail even without an instructor to guide you through you will achieve a solid foundation in data structures. The book has excellent examples of recursion, sorting, hashing, and binary trees. They explain the efficiency(in big O) of the sorts\searches and when to use them. This book is an easy read with great examples but in some cases it helps to do computations on paper or compile small examples so you can truly understand how the various data structures are working. The section on hashing greatly demystifies hashing algorithms and how they work. You can download the sample code from the web. These authors did an excellent job of delivering a clear and concise text on data structures. I would recommend this book to anyone serious about learning data structures and recursion.