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Data Structures, Data Abstraction by Mitchell L Model Recommended

ISBN: 0-13-291279-1       Publisher: Prentice Hall       Pages: 500pp+disk       Price: £21-10

Categories:   data structures     advanced c++

Reviewed by Francis Glassborow in C Vu 6-4 (May 1994)

So what makes this book different? The first answer is that the author takes a pride in what he does. He understands that code in print is to help the reader while code on a disk should be complete and carefully checked. He hasn't just written a book and then moved on to other things but continues to actively support his work by revising the distributed source code and releasing updated versions via an ftp site.

He commented that he had been unable to revise the code to work with a Symantec compiler because none of his associates and friends had one and Symantec had ignored his request to lend him one. I contacted Symantec who were disturbed to find this breakdown in support to authors and promptly corrected it. The author is now reworking his code for this compiler.

In addition he is happy for his code to be distributed and you will find a version on this issue's disk (it won't be the full multi-platform version as that takes more than one of our disks). I hope that you will all respect this author's property rights - if you use C++ sample his code but if you find it of potential interest, buy his book. I should comment that the code is intended to be tutorial and not development code.

If you want to learn about writing data structures in C++ this is definitely a book that you should seriously consider.