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"I wish I had this when I was in college"

Written By: Naseer Siddique

This book puts most of my college textbooks to shame. Not that they were bad, but really this is a step above. Sedgewick is a master at distilling difficult concepts into just a few lines of code, and then talking the reader through all of the implications of any design decision. For a professional who needs to reacquaint himself with the basic principles of algorithms, and needs some simple code to get started on coding a solution, this cannot be beat. While I am not in school anymore, I feel this can also be a great supplemental text for any serious Computer Science university student, although it's possible that the focus on C++ implementations may not be ideal for curricula where Java is the mainstay.

One of the factors that I did not see mentioned in other reviews is that Sedgewick's visual representations of the algorithms are phenomenal. In older algorithms textbooks, these have always been represented by small diagrams--if any--that show what happens when an algorithm is used to attack a small problem (say, a linked list with 10 nodes). This text shows a visual representation of those small cases, but then goes the extra mile to show visual representations of the same algorithm when scaled to a variety of massive inputs. These representations are a great tool for comparing the scalability of various algorithmic approaches against one another.

"Crunch Time"

Written By: O. Durojaiye

When you are ready to take the bold step into algorithms, this book is a great second step. I say second step because I think it helps if you read "teach yourself algorithms in 21 days" before this book.

This book deals with a good number of algorithms and does not shy away from reasonable analysis. The book helped a lot when I was having problems with putting a good harsh function together.

The chapter on recursion is also very good too.

In order to write decent code you have to know about this difficult/painful subject and this book takes some of that pain away.

"Good documentation of basic data structures"

Written By: Marcus A. Mitchell

I purchased this book to refresh my memory on data structures with templates. It is well written in most spots and provides excellent examples. I would recommend this book to any intermediate c++ programmer who wishes to learn/relearn advanced data structures such as Linked Lists,Hash,QuickSort,etc....

"C++ Algorithms"

Written By:

This book is full of great information on C++ algorithms. There are many excellent examples, and the author presents the gammit as far as topics. They really open up your mind to possibilities. The reading at times is rough going, though (very dry). Sample code or examples to download may be found at the publisher's website instead of the one printed in the book.

"Excellent, Exhaustive (but not rigorous)"

Written By:

If you're looking for an exhaustive, upto-date reference/textbook for
fundamental, searching and sorting algorithms, then this is one of
the very best available.

Sedgewick has split his popular book into two volumes, with Graph
algorithms being hifted to the second volume. Moreover, many advanced
topics like computational geometry, fft, number theoretic algorithms
etc, which were introduced in the previous edition, seem to be missing
now - so the breadth of coverage seems to have reduced, which is a pity.

However, the depth has increased instead - i doubt that even Knuth
covers more sorting algorithms ! In particular, there are several
recent algorithms and data structures which are treated in greater
detail here than by Knuth. Of course, Knuth analyses all the
algorithms he presents in rigorous and exhaustive detail, which
this book doesn't.

Moreover, the book has many new algorithms and presents the state of the
art in sorting and searching algorithms, giving it a distinct advantage
over the older books.

Sedgewick makes it very clear in the preface that the emphasis is on
the practical importance of the algorithms, so esoteric algorithms which
are important 'only in theory' may find no mention. Also the emphasis is
more on the design of algorithms than on their analysis.

The number of (exercise!!) problems has multiplied manifold in this edition
to become more than most competing textbooks. Problems are graded by
difficulty level to help you choose the ones relevant to your needs.

The exposition is clear and authoritative - Prof. Sedgewick is a leading
authority in the field of algorithms and a student of Donald Knuth.
He has a gift for making difficult concepts seem simple, and the great
illustrations in the book go a long way in explaining the behaviour of
the algorithms.

For the practising professional, this is an ideal reference, since it'll
help you select the best algorithm for your task without bogging you
down with heavy mathematics.

The reasearcher, on the other hand, may benefit by gaining unique insights
from a master of the area, while using other books for the detailed
analysis of algorithms, including prehaps Sedgewick's own book on the
analysis of algorithms(with Flajolet).

A caveat - the code may not be 'ready to run'. It's better not to rely
on this book to provide you with usable code - if that is what you want,
perhaps the books by Drozdek/Weiss/Heileman/Rowe might be better choices.

If you want C code rather than C++, then the C version of this book is
a good choice, since the code provided is of 'K & R' class and therefore
a delight to read.

Of course, if you're looking for a language independent coverage,
then 'Introduction to algorithms' by Cormen,Leiserson and Rivest is
possibly the best book which combines rigor with comprehensive coverage
of the most important algorithms. Look out for the newly released
second edition.

And if you want a more rigorous and equally exhaustive coverage of
sorting and searching, go for Knuth vol.3 - still the authoritative
reference, though it may require more hard work on the reader's part.

Otherwise, invest in this and you won't be disappointed.