Data Structures and Program Design In C (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: In a word -- Average
Review: This book has many attributes that make it an enlightening read for the computer science student, but it also suffers from a few downfalls. The book is very detailed in its explanations about the data structures it covers, which is certainly a good thing. It presents the benefits and limitations clearly for the methods which it discusses in a manner so that a programmer can make an educated choice on what method should be used. The book manages to cover a great many data structures as well and most of them are presented with understandable examples. However, this book fails to use the STL conventional data structures which means to use the examples in the book you basically have to "reinvent the wheel" and create all of the classes for the data structures rather than use classes that come with your compiler. Also, in the later chapter, this book reverts into a good deal of mathematical analysis of the methods it presents. The book goes to a great deal of trouble to mathematically prove the merits of each method it presents which can be somewhat tedious to those who are not as interested in the semantics behind the algorithms. Furthermore, I used much of the code in the book for a Data Structures class and there were quite a few errors in the code which were unacceptable. Finally, it should be noted that this book assumes you have a working knowledge of C++. If you don't know the language then you will probably be greatly confused and should learn the language first. I think that this book could have been excellent if it had made adhered closer to the STL standards and would have spent more time presenting algorithms and less presenting the mathematical analysis of the algorithms. Yet, I still was able to use this book to become quite knowledgable in the subject, so it is certainly adequete.

Rating:
Summary: Good material for beginning C programmers
Review: This book is an excellent resource for a beginning C programmer that needs to explore the data structures that make up common programs. Things such as queues, stacks, hash tables, and recursion are covered in-depth, yet are understandable. The program examples build on each other to offer a good insight into practical examples of how to use the material convered.

Rating:
Summary: Programming Book from Hell
Review: This book is horrible. It's badly written code wise and also in a literary sense. The author takes good examples and ruins them. Also he makes up his own terms to replace supposedly bad ones. The code is poorly written and contradicts the authors supposed "style." He make use of breaks when ever possible, and then tells you that the use of breaks is not good practice. He also typedef's beyond reason. I would strongly recommending NOT buying this book. I unfortunately had an equally idioic teacher who requried this book.. be warned steer clear.

Rating:
Summary: Programming Book from Hell
Review: This book is horrible. It's badly written code wise and also in a literary sense. The author takes good examples and ruins them. Also he makes up his own terms to replace supposedly bad ones. The code is poorly written and contradicts the authors supposed "style." He make use of breaks when ever possible, and then tells you that the use of breaks is not good practice. He also typedef's beyond reason. I would strongly recommending NOT buying this book. I unfortunately had an equally idioic teacher who requried this book.. be warned steer clear.

Rating:
Summary: I don't understand the criticism
Review: This book is one of the most readable C books I have touched. Its examples are informative without being complex. It uses alot of pictures to help you visualize problems. I don't understand why people were so hard on it. If you are already an expert on algorithms, this is not the book for you. But if you need to walk before you can run, this book is perfect!!!

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the money
Review: This book is unfortunately not worth the price to pay. I had the misfortune of buying it because it was required for a data structures class at my school. My main problem with it is that it does not use the STL versions of the classes in the book. The author writes his own versions that do not conform to the standard. This presented a large problem when I went to use the concepts from the book in a program. I got tons of compiler errors until I finally got mad and looked up the STL version documentation. To my surprise, this book uses different function names and different function signatures in many cases. I would say that it is a decent book for learning the concepts, but as far as using them is concerned, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Not a very good refernce.
Review: This is not a book that can easily be used as a reference source. Program functions are taken from previous chapters making it very difficult to follow the flow of a program example. Forcing you to page through the text to find the information that you need.

Rating:
Summary: This book Sucks and Blows at the same time.
Review: This is one of the most confusing and dis-organized books that I have ever read. Unfortunately, since it's required reading for some classes, I feel sorry for anyone that has to suffer the wrath of C programming morons such as the author of this book. I highly recommend suicide before suffering through this book as a reference. I would recommend that you search elsewhere to learn about data structures in C.

Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: This is one of the most confusing and dis-organized books that I have ever read. Unfortunately, since it's required reading for some classes, I feel sorry for anyone that has to suffer the wrath of C programming morons such as the author of this book. I highly recommend suicide before suffering through this book as a reference. I would recommend that you search elsewhere to learn about data structures in C.

Rating:
Summary: Dreadful introduction to data structures and algorithms
Review: This is one of the worst books I have ever come across. I was forced to study it for one semester for a course in Data Structures and Algo..and it really was painful going with this book as my only guide. Finally had to give up on this and got myself Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen et. al. to relieve myself of the trouble I was going through with this .... There are a lot of weaknesses to this book the most glaring of which is the lack of depth in which the subject has been treated by the authors. The code examples are very poorly documented and most subjects are given a very superficial treatment, certainly not the kind of reference one is looking for when trying to understand a subject. I would strongly recommend that you stay away from this book and go get yourself some decent book which does justice to the subject and doesn't treat it in the frivolous manner in which the authors have treated it in this book.