slimick@cisunx.UUCP (John C Slimick) (05/03/89)
I would like to recommend a new data structures text _Data Structures: Form and Function_ by Harry Smith (HBJ: isbn 0-15-516820-7) for your undergraduate data structures course. I find this book to have a very good mixture of prose, figures, Pascal algorithms, and analysis of alghorithms. I used it in a sophomore level course and had enough material left over for another course as well. The book is remarkably complete on most topics, but (unlike most others) does not beat sorting to death. For example, the chapter on searching covers the following: self-organizing tables random binary search trees (BST) optimal and quasi optimal BSTs height and weight balanced BSTs hashing (linear, chaining, etc) including collisions, rehashing, predictive and perfect hashing tries and (2,3) trees with appropriate algorithms and O(f(n)) computations (or estimations). It has better problems than most , as well. One warning: in what I consider appropriate contexts, the author will use a GOTO to exit a loop; PURISTS beware! (on the other hand, maybe your language has an EXIT or a LEAVE or a ... without a Pascal Phoney-baloney boolean to cause an exit on an unnecessary "while"). John Slimick University of Pittsburgh at Bradford slimick@pittvms.BITNET psuvax1!idis!cisunx!slimick