Customer Reviews

Object-Oriented C++ Data Structures for Real Programmers (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)

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

 

 

Yes finaly a nice book with nice examples about datastructures.

You can read -and understand- the book if you are a mature beginner in the language C++. This book will gide you through diferent concepts of structures: beginning at the begin, ending at the end. The following subjects are included:

- Array container classes and iterators (a bit on templates)
- Vector container classes and iterators
- Single linked list objects
- Double linked list objects
- Stack and Queues
- Binary search trees
- AVL trees
- B trees
- Binary Heaps and Priority Queues
- Sorting and searching
- Hash tables
- Dictionaries
- Some example chapters

- Template Appendix !!!

**** ps: Now I have red more books about this subject, I found some very unpleasent errors! the calculation in the: AVL Tree is incorrect, B Tree is incorrect and (!!) the Binary Heap dus't work properly (buildHeap). Nevertheless this is a nice book to read, aslong you know the errors.

This book has some good concepts and approach to the subject, but the examples have just too many errors, and some errors even cause system exceptions when you run them. Furthermore the author's web side, which is supposed to keep track of the errata, has no records of any errors reported. I personally sent notice of some errors, but received no response.
It is just too frustrating to attempt to learn a subject with examples that do not work, a book that has no support after you purchased it, and the author's web site does not report or respond to its readers. Find something else.

I don't know why one reviewer was so easy on Harrington. This book is just filled with errors. The web site isn't even available anymore. I am weary of these academics writing shoddy books,rife with errors,and then not even posting errata. STAY AWAY from this work.

All I can say is "WOW" when it comes to this book. Do you want a book the elucidates those hard to understand Data Structure concepts like B-Trees? This is the book. Do you want succinct? This is the book.

Jan Harrington does a phenomenal job in the introduction of Data Structures. Then she goes onto applying those concepts using classes, template types, and other OOP techniques! This is the only Data Structures book I will recommend thus far.

What makes this book special and worth 5 stars:
1. easy to follow and detailed diagrams.
2. Self-desribing coding convention (really self-commenting).
3. Doesn't directly promote Design patterns but provides smartly layered approach between sample apps and the structures presented.
4. Provides sample applications with memory & disk based structures.
5. In most parts of the book, simple type,semi-base object (node), and Template implementations are presented for the data structure.
However, sometimes, it feels like just another 'code dump madness' book!
I wish if the Author provided files with carriage return+linefeeded
because if you don't have a MAC, you will have to manually convert every file or windows compilers rightfully complain about it. Source files need to be updated to reflect ISO C++ standard and remove some other errors. For example, standard '#include headerFile' should be without extention. In AVL tree there are very obvious errors; overloading (definition doesn't match with is being declared),paramater type errors. This should not effect the quality of this book as long as source code can hopefully be updated because its a major spoiler. C++ stl library HOPEFULLY will utilized in the next version of this book without creating custom strings, stacks,queues,lists ...etc.