Availability: This book is available from Pearson Australia as a hardcopy or a softcopy and from Booktopia and Zookal.

Unfortunately, Amazon do not carry it.

Executive summary: budget-priced text covering programming in C, and an introduction to computer science - in other words, a bog standard first-semester first-year syllabus. The last four chapters include an introduction to algorithm design and analysis, covering dynamic data structures, hashing, sorting algorithms, and searching.

Length: x + 248 pages.

Price: retail price is around $AUD85 for the hardcopy, you may be able to get it for less with student discount.

Other resources: all of the C programs in the book are available to people wishing to use it as a text; and a complete set of lecture slides (PDF) are also available. Email the author for more information.

Information Available

Pearson Catalog page Web page for first edition, including errata listing for first edition Errata listing for revised edition Back cover blurb Professor Alistair Moffat has been a member of the academic staff at The University of Melbourne since 1987. This book has evolved out of his award-winning lecture presentations, and draws on his three decades of teaching experience with undergraduate students. The readable style is punctuated by more than 100 working programs, and each chapter includes a detailed case study, highlighted key points, and a range of on-paper and programming exercises. What they think... "A truly gripping read" - the author. "Tom Clancy has a problem" - the author's wife. "We had to buy it" - the author's students.

(click photo for larger image)

Sample pages (subject to copyright, and not for distribution or duplication):

• Table of contents and preface

• Two pages from Chapter 1
• Two pages from Chapter 2
• Two pages from Chapter 3
• Two pages from Chapter 4
• Two pages from Chapter 5
• Two pages from Chapter 6
• Two pages from Chapter 7
• Two pages from Chapter 8
• Two pages from Chapter 9
• Two pages from Chapter 10
• Two pages from Chapter 11
• Two pages from Chapter 12
• Two pages from Chapter 13

• The complete index

Changes in the Revised Edition

• All of the mistakes noted in the first edition were corrected.
• All of the references to computer speed and size were updated, and all of the reported program execution times were replaced. And no more talk of floppy disks!
• All of the programs were reviewed, with many small changes made: to layout; to function prototypes (names for variables added as well as types); and to uniformly declare argc as a *char[] rather than char**.
• The section in Chapter 7 on sorting was replaced (insertion sort is now used as a first example, rather than bubblesort)
• New material on time-based simulations was added to Chapter 9.
• Chapter 12 was reorganized to make it flow better, including the section on hashing being extended.
• Minor wording changes were made throughout, and areas where students typically encountered confusion were revised, and where appropriate, extended.
• Additional exercises were added to most of the chapters.