The Art of Computer Programming

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The Art of Computer Programming is a comprehensive monograph written by Donald Knuth which covers many kinds of programming algorithms and their analysis. Knuth began the project in 1962, which was originally planned to be one book. The first three volumes were published in rapid succession, starting with volume 1 in 1968, volume 2 in 1969, and volume 3 in 1973. Volume 4 is currently in preparation, the first installment of which was published in February 2005, with additional installments planned approximately twice per year.

Considered an expert at writing compilers, Knuth started to write a book about compiler design in 1962. He soon realized that the scope of the book needed to be much larger. In June 1965, Knuth finished the first draft of what was originally planned to be a single volume of twelve chapters. This hand-written manuscript was 3,000 pages long. Knuth had assumed that about five hand-written pages would translate into one printed page. The publisher said that it was actually about 1½ hand-written pages to one printed page: thus the book would be 2,000 pages in length! The plan of the book was changed to have seven volumes, each with one or two chapters. Due to the growth in the material, the plan for Volume 4 has since expanded to include Volumes 4A, 4B, 4C, and possibly 4D. Volume 4A is likely to split further, since 7.1.1 and 7.2.1 together are already nearly 500 pages.

In 1976, Knuth prepared a second edition of Volume 2, requiring it to be typeset again. But the style of type (probably called hot type) used in the first edition was no longer available. So in 1977 he decided to spend a few months working up something more suitable. Eight years later, he returned with TeX, which is currently used for all volumes.

All examples in the books use a language called "MIX assembly language," which runs on the hypothetical MIX computer. (Currently, the MIX computer is being replaced by the MMIX computer, which is a RISC version.) Software such as GNU MDK exists to provide emulation of the MIX architecture.

The famous offer of a reward check worth "one hexadecimal dollar" for any errors found, and the correction of these errors in subsequent printings, has contributed to the highly polished and continued authoritative nature of the work, long after its first publication. Another characteristic of the volumes is the variation in the difficulty of the exercises. The level of difficulty ranges from "warm-up" exercises to unsolved research problems, giving any reader a challenge.

1 Critical response
2 Chapter outline
3 Outline of Volume 4A Enumeration and Backtracking
4 English editions
- 4.1 Current editions
- 4.2 Previous editions
5 References
6 External links

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Critical response

American Scientist has included this work among the best twelve physical-science monographs of the twentieth century, and amongst the computer science community it is regarded as the first and still the best comprehensive treatment of its subject. Covers of the third edition of Volume 1 quote Bill Gates as saying "If you think you're a really good programmer... read (Knuth's) Art of Computer Programming...You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing." (According to humorous folklore, Steve Jobs actually made the incredible claim. [1])

Some readers are chagrined at the use of assembly language, but Knuth considers this necessary because algorithms need a context to judge speed and memory usage. It does, however, limit the accessibility of the book to many readers, and limits its usefulness as a "cookbook" for practising programmers, many of whom are unfamiliar with assembler, and even if they are, have no particular desire to translate assembly code into a high-level language. A number of more accessible algorithms textbooks using high-level language examples exist and are popular for precisely these reasons.

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Chapter outline

Volume 1 - Fundamental Algorithms
- Chapter 1 - Basic concepts
- Chapter 2 - Information structures
Volume 2 - Seminumerical Algorithms
- Chapter 3 - Random numbers
- Chapter 4 - Arithmetic
Volume 3 - Sorting and Searching
- Chapter 5 - Sorting
- Chapter 6 - Searching
Volume 4 - Combinatorial Algorithms, in preparation (three fascicles have been published as of February 2006, and alpha-test versions of additional fascicles are downloadable from Knuth's page below).
- Volume 4A, Enumeration and Backtracking
  - Chapter 7 - Combinatorial searching
- Volume 4B, Graph and Network Algorithms
  - Chapter 7 continued
- Volume 4C and possibly 4D, Optimization and Recursion
  - Chapter 7 continued
  - Chapter 8 - Recursion
Volume 5 - Syntactic Algorithms, planned (as of July 2005, estimated in 2010).
- Chapter 9 - Lexical scanning
- Chapter 10 - Parsing techniques
Volume 6 - Theory of Context-Free Languages, planned.
Volume 7 - Compiler Techniques, planned.

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Outline of Volume 4A Enumeration and Backtracking

7. - Introduction
- 7.1 - Zeros and ones
  - 7.1.1 - Boolean basics (83 pp)
  - 7.1.2 - Boolean evaluation (62 pp)
  - 7.1.3 - Bitwise tricks and techniques
  - 7.1.4 - Representation of Boolean functions
- 7.2 - Generating all possibilities
  - 7.2.1 - Combinatorial generators (397 pp)
    - 7.2.1.1 - Generating all n-tuples - published in Volume 4, Fascicle 2
    - 7.2.1.2 - Generating all permutations - published in Volume 4, Fascicle 2
    - 7.2.1.3 - Generating all combinations - published in Volume 4, Fascicle 3
    - 7.2.1.4 - Generating all partitions - published in Volume 4, Fascicle 3
    - 7.2.1.5 - Generating all set partitions - published in Volume 4, Fascicle 3
    - 7.2.1.6 - Generating all trees - published in Volume 4, Fascicle 4
    - 7.2.1.7 - History and further references - published in Volume 4, Fascicle 4
  - 7.2.2 - Basic backtrack
  - 7.2.3 - Efficient backtracking
- 7.3 - Shortest paths

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English editions

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Current editions

Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms. Third Edition (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1997), xx+650pp. ISBN 0-201-89683-4
Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms. Third Edition (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1997), xiv+762pp. ISBN 0-201-89684-2
Volume 3: Sorting and Searching. Second Edition (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1998), xiv+780pp.+foldout. ISBN 0-201-89685-0
Volume 1, Fascicle 1: MMIX -- A RISC Computer for the New Millennium. (Addison-Wesley, February 14, 2005) ISBN 0-201-85392-2 (will be in the fourth edition of volume 1)
Volume 4, Fascicle 0: Boolean basics (in preparation, partial preview available)
Volume 4, Fascicle 2: Generating All Tuples and Permutations, (Addison-Wesley, February 14, 2005) v+127pp, ISBN 0-201-85393-0
Volume 4, Fascicle 3: Generating All Combinations and Partitions. (Addison-Wesley, July 26, 2005) vi+150pp, ISBN 0-201-85394-9
Volume 4, Fascicle 4: Generating all Trees -- History of Combinatorial Generation, (Addison-Wesley, February 6, 2006) vi+120pp, ISBN 0-321-33570-8

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Previous editions

Volume 1, first edition, 1968.
Volume 2, first edition, 1969, xi+624pp, ISBN 0-201-03802-1.
Volume 3, first edition, 1973, xi+723pp+centerfold, ISBN 0-201-03800-X.
Volume 1, second edition, 1973, xiii+634pp, ISBN 0-201-03809-9.
Volume 2, second edition, 1981, xiii+ 688pp. ISBN 0-201-03822-6.

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References

Portraits in Silicon, Robert Slater, 1987, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-19262-4
Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists, Dennis Shasha and Cathy Lazere, 1995, Copernicus, ISBN 0-387-97992-1

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