Customer Reviews

C & Data Structures (Charles River Media Computer Engineering)

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

 

 

I am profoundly disturbed by the poor quality of this book. Here is an example to show why I feel that way. The example was chosen almost at random but even I was shocked when I came to type it in. I would not accept such code from a first year student.
On page 139 the author provides the following code (I have taken great care to copy the code exactly as it is in the book):
Struct address \\ A
{
plot char [30], struc char[30];
city char[30]
}
struct student \\ B
{
name char[30];
marks float;
struct address adr;
}
main ( )
{
struct student student1; \\D
struct student class[20]; \\E
class[1].marks = 70; // F
I have stopped at this point as it continues with a hard coded initialisation of class[1] followed by five printf() statements to output the contents of class[1] to stdout. Nowhere do the authors expalin why they want an array, why they ignore the first element of the array and why the bothered with defining student1. In addition the use of 'class' as a name introduces a gratuitous incompatibility with C++.
There then follows a section explaining the code. The first item is:
1. Statement A declares the address of a structure containing the members plot, street and city.
That code is so bad that I can think of no explanation for how a book on C could be distributed with such code in it.
I am disturbed by the number of positive reviews this book has had from readers because no one who actually tried the code provided by the authors could have got it working and the explanations are often bizarre.
Were it possible I would give this book minus 5 stars because learning from it would seriously impede a reader's development as a programmer.
There are numerous better books on both Data Structures and C. Indeed almost any book on either subject would be better.

I would have to disagree with the other reviews of this text. I found this book full of gramatical errors, typos, and errors in the source code. The concepts presented in the text are exelent and the authors do a fine job of presenting these ideas. It is unfortunate that the editing was not better and that some of the source code seemingly was not compiled and tested prior to being included in the book.

Stay away unless you are desperate to lay hands on any data structures book. It has so many errors. Poor editing can confuse you. The code is written in often very beginner's style while no thought is given to Whys and Why Nots of an approach. Definitely not a good reference. Use and throw perhaps.

The program outputs are needlessly printed without any sensible explaination for most of them.

As stated by many others, this book contains many errors; especially in the program code that is listed in the book.

There are numerous places where function calls written in the programs given make reference to variables that don't exist and won't run without editing. There are some sections where functions are added to the program code that are not discussed nor relevant to the topic at hand as if sections were cut and pasted without checking for accuracy.

The whole book is full of these types of things. So while the theory behind the logic seems to be sound, the examples and applications are so wrought full of holes that you'll probably spend more time trying to debug and decipher the code than focus on what you're trying to learn.

Avoid this book like the plague.

The authors did a decent job in presenting the ideas and concepts, BUT here's why I do not recommend this book:
- Too Many Errors in the source code. I spent more time debugging the code than actually trying to learn about Data Structures in C.
- Poorly Edited. It has many grammatical errors and typos.

They should have never released this book.

Find another book on Data Structures don't waste your time with this one like I did.

I was looking for a book to help me do beginner's data structure problems. This book has tons of example code that is simple, easy to read and understand. (That's what I was looking for!) A multitudinous variety of code to choose from - like a kid in the candy aisle. On the other hand, the book had some typos. Their was adequate explanations for the code but not rich. The book's dialog was also a bit choppy and wasn't the smoothest talking to the reader. I would give this book 3 stars but since I got a good grade in my beginning data structures class because of this particular book, I biasly bumped it to five stars. T

It is not clear why the authors chose C into which to teach data structures. Of course C can do this. But other languages like C++, Java and C# could have been chosen. And those give object oriented functionality that could have been put to good use in the implementation of these structures. The book never really elaborates about the choice of C.

Anyway, the material is clearly written. It gives good treatments of arrays, linked lists, stacks and queues. While for trees and graphs, the discussion is rather basic. In general, the algorithmic depth here does not approach the standard texts by Sedgewick, Aho or Knuth.

The last part of the book is a set of chapters devoted to problems and their solution codes. This may have merit to you, if you have been searching for good exercise sets. A distinctive aspect of the text.

I agree that there are many examples and CD is also very useful but, author lack explanation on the examples. I give this book 3 stars because it has complete examples which are hard to find in books on C data structures subject.
I suggest using this book with "Introduction to Algorithm" by Thomas Cormen for better understanding on C Data Structures.

The book arrived in near new condition with the CD in tack. I saved an incredible 50.00 on a textbook that arrived promptly and in magnificent condition!!!

Mostly I check reviews before buying a book. I bought this book even I saw by other reviewers that it is full of errors. I didn't care about that, but looking how the author tackles any problem or use the algorithms. I was NOT disappointed. I have seen many expensive books on this subject, but this is the only book which covers which other books left out. Let me say the last word this book is worth more than what I paid for.