Rating: 
Summary: Read description: for ADVANCED data structures course
Review: Many people on here have complained that this book goes way over the head of students not already familiar with some C++ and data structures. To these comments, I refer you to the product description (or editorial review, whichever) that specifically says this is an advanced text. I apologize to those whose professors ordered this book for intro data structures--I can understand why this book would go past the scope of that class. However, if you know any Object Oriented programming (Java or C++ preferably) and know some basic algorithms and structures (matrices, sorts, recursion, trees, queues, etc.) this book will take you far. I don't even mean that you must be proficient in these structures, just have some basic understanding of how they work. For example, you should know what a tree is (root, leaves, implemented with pointers and nodes) and book will tell you how to use trees (B-Trees, Binary trees, etc.). By the point you are using this book, hopefully you'll have taken the math and programming classes needed to comprehend this text. Otherwise, do not blame the text for being targeted to an advanced audience.
Rating: 
Summary: Well explained.
Review: Mark Allen Weiss did a superb job at explaining the very abstract material. I think every person interested in computer Science should read.
Rating: 
Summary: Cryptic, difficult to follow, not a good book
Review: The author writes, "...the [this] book usually provides about one-half to three-quarters of an implementation, and the student is encouraged to supply the rest." This means that you need to buy another, real, reference book (which this book is not).
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for decent understanding of data structure
Review: This book is an excellent book for beginner's understanding of data structure. It has very detail proof, and very good examples about the data structure and algorithm. If you finish this book, you are not afraid of any Abstract Data Type anymore.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to leave those beginners eating dust...
Review: This book is excellent, I also own the C and Java versions and I love them all. For a long time I knew the basics of programmin, I knew Basic, VB, C, C++ and Java, but I really couldn't get anything advanced done, I simply got stuck and didn't know what to do and how.This book changed it all. But make sure you are ready for this. Some have said that this is for academics only or that it is too difficult. You MUST know the basics first! Someone complained that the code is uncommented, Geez... The code fragments are quite short and very basic C++. If you don't know how to handle structs, templates, pointers and variable operations, then don't complain that this book is too difficult. You just haven't got the basics yet. When you know the basics but need to know how to store data into the memory for the optimal use (instead of relying on arrays for everything), you must read a book on Data Structures and this book is among the best. Yes, it makes you work, yes you have to read carefully through the examples, but that is the nature of these things. You are no longer a beginner in first grade. It is good to know some math, but if you don't need to learn the analysis (mostly for academic use) then you can skip the analysis stuff. Just learn to implement the structures and algorithms, the text will tell you which are the best ones.
Rating:
Summary: Beginner Beware
Review: This book is impossible to learn from unless you know c++ like the person who wrote the language. I am using this book for my data structures class I'm in right now and it is useless. Our teacher is constantly finding things that are against normal convention. The code is very incomplete. Don't worry though, cause if you don't know c++ very very very well, you'll never even realize it. I compare his homework problems to teaching someone how to paint a bird house and then asking him how to build a skyscrapper. You should definetly avoid this book at all costs.
Rating:
Summary: Beginner Beware
Review: This book is impossible to learn from unless you know c++ like the person who wrote the language. I am using this book for my data structures class I'm in right now and it is useless. Our teacher is constantly finding things that are against normal convention. The code is very incomplete. Don't worry though, cause if you don't know c++ very very very well, you'll never even realize it. I compare his homework problems to teaching someone how to paint a bird house and then asking him how to build a skyscrapper. You should definetly avoid this book at all costs.
Rating: 
Summary: Academics only!
Review: This book is the text for the Data Structures course at my university. If your looking for a practical book on algorithms and data structures that you can put to immediate use... THIS IS NOT your book! Half written algorithms and critical parts of a program "left as an exercise" make this book a pain to read. This is clearly an
academic book that is not suitable for self-study!
Rating:
Summary: TANSTAAFL - there is no such thing as a free lunch
Review: This book takes on quite an academic approach, yes. And it leaves some parts as "an excercice for the reader". But it's thorough, and explains everything well. It deals with a difficult subject; it's stupid to think there would be an "easier" way of teaching this - no pain no gain. If you do _want_ to learn about data structures and algorithm analysis, it's an excellent book
Rating:
Summary: Overall A Good Book
Review: This book was used in CS 303 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. It is overall a good book and covers many topics in a reasonable depth. Its very readable and definitely worth the buy. The *best* part are the supplied references at the end of each chapter. My complaints: 1. Focuses on a Specific language. While there are editions for a number of languages, Weiss does not give pseudo code implementations, so you have to rely on your programming knowledge. While this is beneficial since it grounds the details in a real language, I'd rather not get in the details at this point. And things like necessary operations for data structures are provided only in code form, so you have to read and understand the code. That is more a practical concern that shouldnt be focused on. I prefer a higher level, more mathematically intense analysis. 2. No answer to questions asked at the end of the section. This would be nice, especially for independent study, but not overly needed in this book. Its written well enough that it is not as much of a requirement. 3. The mathematical treatment of the algorithm analysis is a bit lacking. What little there is is not well explained. For those without the needed background, its useless, for those with a moderate background a sufficient amount of detail is not provided.
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