Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Demonstrates the close links between construction, proof, and analysis of programs. Introduces the basic elements that allow proof and analysis of iterative programs to be carried out and introduces the concept of recursive programming. Also shows how a recursive program can be converted into an iterative program. Offers numerous, clearly presented examples.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Algorithms are mathematical procedures that can be implemented as computer programs. This short book addresses the three major tasks of algorithm design: construction-build an algorithm that solves a given problem; proof-demonstrate that an algorithm does solve the desired problem; analysis-show how much time and space executing the algorithm will require. Roughly half of the book deals with proof, but in a very formal style that undergraduates would find daunting. An easier introduction to proof is R.B. Anderson's Proving Programs Correct (1979). The authors stress the idea that the construction of an algorithm and its proof should be done simultaneously. This idea is presented in a more intuitive setting by N. Wirth in Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs (CH, Jun '76) and in Algorithms & Data Structures (CH, Apr '86). Analysis of some of the constructed algorithms is presented but this material is inadequate. Fuller treatments of analysis at an undergraduate level are given by S. Baase, Computer Algorithms (CH, Jun '79), and E. Horowitz and S. Sahni, Fundamentals of Computer Algorithms (CH, May '77). There are some good things to be said about the book under review. The algorithms are presented in an almost PASCAL form, so actual implementation should be easy. The chapter on elimination of recursion is the best that this reviewer has seen. Overall this book would be of most use to a graduate student who is familiar with algorithms and is interested in a formal approach.-P. Cull, Oregon State University