Algorithms in Java, Parts 1-4, 3rd Edition

Product Author Bios

Robert Sedgewick is the William O. Baker Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He is a Director of Adobe Systems and has served on the research staffs at Xerox PARC, IDA, and INRIA. He earned his Ph.D from Stanford University under Donald E. Knuth.

Sedgewick has a real gift for explaining concepts in a way that makes them easy to understand. The use of real programs in page-size (or less) chunks that can be easily understood is a real plus. The figures, programs, and tables are a significant contribution to the learning experience of the reader; they make this book distinctive.
--William A. Ward, University of South Alabama

This edition of Robert Sedgewick's popular work provides current and comprehensive coverage of important algorithms for Java programmers. Michael Schidlowsky and Sedgewick have developed new Java implementations that both express the methods in a concise and direct manner and provide programmers with the practical means to test them on real applications.

Many new algorithms are presented, and the explanations of each algorithm are much more detailed than in previous editions. A new text design and detailed, innovative figures, with accompanying commentary, greatly enhance the presentation. The third edition retains the successful blend of theory and practice that has made Sedgewick's work an invaluable resource for more than 400,000 programmers!

This particular book, Parts 1-4, represents the essential first half of Sedgewick's complete work. It provides extensive coverage of fundamental data structures and algorithms for sorting, searching, and related applications. Although the substance of the book applies to programming in any language, the implementations by Schidlowsky and Sedgewick also exploit the natural match between Java classes and abstract data type (ADT) implementations.

Highlights
• Java class implementations of more than 100 important practical algorithms
• Emphasis on ADTs, modular programming, and object-oriented programming
• Extensive coverage of arrays, linked lists, trees, and other fundamental data structures
• Thorough treatment of algorithms for sorting, selection, priority queue ADT implementations, and symbol table ADT implementations (search algorithms)
• Complete implementations for binomial queues, multiway radix sorting, randomized BSTs, splay trees, skip lists, multiway tries, B trees, extendible hashing, and many other advanced methods
• Quantitative information about the algorithms that gives you a basis for comparing them
• More than 1,000 exercises and more than 250 detailed figures to help you learn properties of the algorithms

Whether you are learning the algorithms for the first time or wish to have up-to-date reference material that incorporates new programming styles with classic and new algorithms, you will find a wealth of useful information in this book.

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Priority Queues and Heapsort in Java

Table of Contents

I. FUNDAMENTALS.

II. DATA STRUCTURES.

III. SORTING.

IV. SEARCHING.

Preface

This book is the first of three volumes that are intended to survey the most important computer algorithms in use today. This first volume (Parts 14) covers fundamental concepts (Part 1), data structures (Part 2), sorting algorithms (Part 3), and searching algorithms (Part 4); the (yet to be published) second volume (Part 5) covers graphs and graph algorithms; and the (yet to be published) third volume (Parts 68) covers strings (Part 6), computational geometry (Part 7), and advanced algorithms and applications (Part 8).

The books are useful as texts early in the computer science curriculum, after students have acquired basic programming skills and familiarity with computer systems, but before they have taken specialized courses in advanced areas of computer science or computer applications. The books also are useful for self-study or as a reference for people engaged in the development of computer systems or applications programs because they contain implementations of useful algorithms and detailed information on these algorithms performance characteristics. The broad perspective taken makes the series an appropriate introduction to the field.

Together the three volumes comprise the Third Edition of a book that has been widely used by students and programmers around the world for many years. I have completely rewritten the text for this edition, and I have added thousands of new exercises, hundreds of new figures, dozens of new programs, and detailed commentary on all the figures and programs. This new material provides both coverage of new topics and fuller explanations of many of the classic algorithms. A new emphasis on abstract data types throughout the books makes the programs more broadly useful and relevant in modern object-oriented programming environments. People who have read previous editions will find a wealth of new information throughout; all readers will find a wealth of pedagogical material that provides effective access to essential concepts.

These books are not just for programmers and computer science students. Everyone who uses a computer wants it to run faster or to solve larger problems. The algorithms that we consider represent a body of knowledge developed during the last 50 years that is the basis for the efficient use of the computer for a broad variety of applications. From N-body simulation problems in physics to genetic-sequencing problems in molecular biology, the basic methods described here have become essential in scientific research; and from database systems to Internet search engines, they have become essential parts of modern software systems. As the scope of computer applications becomes more widespread, so grows the impact of basic algorithms, particularly the fundamental graph algorithms covered in this volume. The goal of this book is to serve as a resource so that students and professionals can know and make intelligent use of graph algorithms as the need arises in whatever computer application they might undertake.

This book, Algorithms in Java, Third Edition, Parts 1-4, contains 16 chapters grouped into four major parts: fundamentals, data structures, sorting, and searching. The descriptions here are intended to give readers an understanding of the basic properties of as broad a range of fundamental algorithms as possible. The algorithms described here have found widespread use for years, and represent an essential body of knowledge for both the practicing programmer and the computerscience student. The second volume is devoted to graph algorithms, and the third consists of four additional parts that cover strings, geometry, and advanced topics. My primary goal in developing these books has been to bring together fundamental methods from diverse areas, to provide access to the best methods known for solving problems by computer.

You will most appreciate the material here if you have had one or two previous courses in computer science or have had equivalent programming experience: one course in programming in a high-level language, such as Java, C, or C++, and perhaps another course that teaches fundamental concepts of programming systems. This book is thus intended for anyone conversant with a modern programming language and with the basic features of modern computer systems. References that might help to fill in gaps in your background are suggested in the text. Most of the mathematical material supporting the analytic results is self-contained (or is labeled as beyond the scope of this book), so little specific preparation in mathematics is required for the bulk of the book, although mathematical maturity is definitely helpful.

There is a great deal of flexibility in how the material here can be taught, depending on the taste of the instructor and the preparation of the students. The algorithms described have found widespread use for years, and represent an essential body of knowledge for both the practicing programmer and the computer science student. There is sufficient coverage of basic material for the book to be used in a course on data structures and algorithms, and there is sufficient detail and coverage of advanced material for the book to be used for a course on graph algorithms. Some instructors may wish to emphasize implementations and practical concerns; others may wish to emphasize analysis and theoretical concepts.

An elementary course on data structures and algorithms might emphasize the basic data structures in Part Two and their use in the implementations in Parts Three and Four. A course on design and analysis of algorithms might emphasize the fundamental material in Part One and Chapter 5, then study the ways in which the algorithms in Parts Three and Four achieve good asymptotic performance. A course on software engineering might omit the mathematical and advanced algorithmic material, and emphasize how to integrate the implementations given here into large programs or systems. A course on algorithms might take a survey approach and introduce concepts from all these areas.

Earlier editions of this book that are based on other programming languages have been used at scores of colleges and universities as a text for the second or third course in computer science and as supplemental reading for other courses. At Princeton, our experience has been that the breadth of coverage of material in this book provides our majors with an introduction to computer science that can be expanded on in later courses on analysis of algorithms, systems programming, and theoretical computer science, while providing the growing group of students from other disciplines with a large set of techniques that these people can put to good use immediately.

The exercises--nearly all of which are new to this edition--fall into several types. Some are intended to test understanding of material in the text, and simply ask readers to work through an example or to apply concepts described. Others involve implementing and putting together the algorithms, or running empirical studies to compare variants of the algorithms and to learn their properties. Still others are a repository for important information at a level of detail that is not appropriate for the text. Reading and thinking about the exercises will pay dividends for every reader.

Anyone wanting to use a computer more effectively can use this book for reference or for self-study. People with programming experience can find information on specific topics throughout the book. To a large extent, you can read the individual chapters in the book independently of the others, although, in some cases, algorithms in one chapter make use of methods from a previous chapter.

The orientation of the book is to study algorithms likely to be of practical use. The book provides information about the tools of

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