Now Includes the Long-Anticipated Volume 4B! Countless readers have spoken about the profound
personal influence of Knuth's work. Scientists have marveled at the beauty and elegance of his
analysis while ordinary programmers have successfully applied his "cookbook" solutions to
their day-to-day problems. All have admired Knuth for the breadth clarity accuracy and good
humor found in his books. Primarily written as a reference some people have nevertheless found
it possible and interesting to read each volume from beginning to end. A programmer in China
even compared the experience to reading a poem. Whatever your background if you need to do any
serious computer programming you will find your own good reason to make each volume in this
series a readily accessible part of your scholarly or professional library. These five books
comprise what easily could be the most important set of information on any serious programmer's
bookshelf. This set now includes Volume 4B the sequel to Volume 4A which extends Knuth's
exploration of combinatorial algorithms. These algorithms are of keen interest to software
designers because ". . . a single good idea can save years or even centuries of computer time."
"Donald Knuth may very well be a great master of the analysis of algorithms but more than that
he is an incredible and tireless storyteller who always strikes the perfect balance between
theory practice and fun. [ The Art of Computer Programming Volume 4B Combinatorial
Algorithms Part 2 ] dives deep into the fascinating exploration of search spaces (which is
quite like looking for a needle in a haystack or even harder to prove the absence of a needle
in a haystack) where actions performed while moving forward must be meticulously undone when
backtracking. It introduces us to the beauty of dancing links for removing and restoring the
cells of a matrix in a dance which is both simple to implement and very efficient. And it
studies the iconic and versatile satisfiability problem and carefully analyses various
ingredients of SAT solvers." -- Christine Solnon Department of Computer Science INSA Lyon
This box set includes the following volumes: The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 1:
Fundamental Algorithms 3rd Edition The Art of Computer Programming Volume 2: Seminumerical
Algorithms 3rd Edition The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 3: Sorting and Searching 2nd
Edition The Art of Computer Programming Volume 4A: Combinatorial Algorithms Part 1 The Art of
Computer Programming Volume 4B: Combinatorial Algorithms Part 2
