taocp - Developer IT

The disjoint set in TAOCP

- by Yongwei Xing

Hi all I want to know if Donal Knuth has covered the disjoint set in his great book ? If so, which chapter is it? Best Regards,

How many people actually read "The Art Of Computer Programming" books?

"TAOCP book is one of the must-reading CS books." I read such a statement so many times but I never see person who read and study over the book. Maybe the book itself makes our job more secure(^^). Have you ever read the book?

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What are the most known arbitrary precision arithmetic implementation approaches?

- by keykeeper

I'm going to write a class library for .NET which provide an implementation of arbitrary precision arithmetic for integer, rational and maybe complex numbers. What best known approaches should I become familiar with? I tried to start with Knuth's TAOCP Vol.2 (Seminumerical Algorithms, Chapter 4 – Arithmetic) but it's too complicated. At least I couldn't get the ideas in a relatively short period of time.

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The Art of Computer Programming - To read or not to read?

- by Zannjaminderson

There are lots of books about programming out there, and it seems Code Complete is pretty much at the top of most people's list of "must-read programming books", but what about The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth? I'm a busy person, between work and a young family I don't have a ton of free time, so I have to be picky about how I use it. I'm wondering - has anybody here read 'TAOCP'? If so, is it worth making time to read or would some other book or more on-the-side programming like pet projects or contributing to open source be a better use of my time in terms of professional development? DISCLAIMER - For those of you who sport "Knuth is my homeboy" t-shirts, don't get me wrong - I want to read it, but I'm just wondering if it should be right at the top of my priority list or if something else should come first.

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Don Knuth and MMIXAL vs. Chuck Moore and Forth -- Algorithms and Ideal Machines -- was there cross-pollination / influence in their ideas / work?

- by AKE

Question: To what extent is it known (or believed) that Chuck Moore and Don Knuth had influence on each other's thoughts on ideal machines, or their work on algorithms? I'm interested in citations, interviews, articles, links, or any other sort of evidence. It could also be evidence of the form of A and B here suggest that Moore might have borrowed or influenced C and D from Knuth here, or vice versa. (Opinions are of course welcome, but references / links would be better!) Context: Until fairly recently, I have been primarily familiar with Knuth's work on algorithms and computing models, mostly through TAOCP but also through his interviews and other writings. However, the more I have been using Forth, the more I am struck by both the power of a stack-based machine model, and the way in which the spareness of the model makes fundamental algorithmic improvements more readily apparent. A lot of what Knuth has done in fundamental analysis of algorithms has, it seems to me, a very similar flavour, and I can easily imagine that in a parallel universe, Knuth might perhaps have chosen Forth as his computing model. That's the software / algorithms / programming side of things. When it comes to "ideal computing machines", Knuth in the 70s came up with the MIX computer model, and then, collaborating with designers of state-of-the-art RISC chips through the 90s, updated this with the modern MMIX model and its attendant assembly language MMIXAL. Meanwhile, Moore, having been using and refining Forth as a language, but using it on top of whatever processor happened to be in the computer he was programming, began to imagine a world in which the efficiency and value of stack-based programming were reflected in hardware. So he went on in the 80s to develop his own stack-based hardware chips, defining the term MISC (Minimal Instruction Set Computers) along the way, and ending up eventually with the first Forth chip, the MuP21. Both are brilliant men with keen insight into the art of programming and algorithms, and both work at the intersection between algorithms, programs, and bare metal hardware (i.e. hardware without the clutter of operating systems). Which leads me to the headlined question... Question:To what extent is it known (or believed) that Chuck Moore and Don Knuth had influence on each other's thoughts on ideal machines, or their work on algorithms?

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reconstructing a tree from its preorder and postorder lists.

- by NomeN

Consider the situation where you have two lists of nodes of which all you know is that one is a representation of a preorder traversal of some tree and the other a representation of a postorder traversal of the same tree. I believe it is possible to reconstruct the tree exactly from these two lists, and I think I have an algorithm to do it, but have not proven it. As this will be a part of a masters project I need to be absolutely certain that it is possible and correct (Mathematically proven). However it will not be the focus of the project, so I was wondering if there is a source out there (i.e. paper or book) I could quote for the proof. (Maybe in TAOCP? anybody know the section possibly?) In short, I need a proven algorithm in a quotable resource that reconstructs a tree from its pre and post order traversals. Note: The tree in question will probably not be binary, or balanced, or anything that would make it too easy. Note2: Using only the preorder or the postorder list would be even better, but I do not think it is possible. Note3: A node can have any amount of children. Note4: I only care about the order of siblings. Left or right does not matter when there is only one child.

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How to implement a simple queue properly?

- by Stephen Hsu

The current Go library doesn't provide the queue container. To implement a simple queue, I use circle array as the underlying data structure. It follows algorithms mentioned in TAOCP: Insert Y into queue X: X[R]<-Y; R<-(R+1)%M; if R=F then OVERFLOW. Delete Y from queue X: if F=R then UNDERFLOW; Y<-X[F]; F<-(F+1) % M. F: Front, R: Rear, M: Array length. Following is the code: package main import ( "fmt" ) type Queue struct { len int head, tail int q []int } func New(n int) *Queue { return &Queue{n, 0, 0, make([]int, n)} } func (p *Queue) Enqueue(x int) bool { p.q[p.tail] = x p.tail = (p.tail + 1) % p.len return p.head != p.tail } func (p *Queue) Dequeue() (int, bool) { if p.head == p.tail { return 0, false } x := p.q[p.head] p.head = (p.head + 1) % p.len return x, true } func main() { q := New(10) for i := 1; i < 13; i++ { fmt.Println(i, q.Enqueue(i)) } fmt.Println() for i := 1; i < 13; i++ { fmt.Println(q.Dequeue()) } } But the output is obviously wrong: 1 true 2 true 3 true 4 true 5 true 6 true 7 true 8 true 9 true 10 false 11 true 12 true 11 true 12 true 0 false 0 false 0 false 0 false 0 false 0 false 0 false 0 false 0 false 0 false I think I need one more field to make the code work properly. What do you suggest?

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3D and AI basics. The foundation before the coding.

- by Allan

Hi, everyone. (If you have the time and patience:) I've recently made the decision to study programming seriously and I'm about to order TAOCP and Concrete Mathematics to begin my studies (please don't get caught up on this). I'm very much interested in learning and understanding how 3D works but I'm aware that if I plan to do it right there's still a long walk before I get to actually play with 3D coding. Now to the question.. (tl;dr) Excluding programming itself, what disciplines do I have to be familiar with to code 3D? What kinds of mathematics? Physics? What else? What books do you recommend on such subjects? Now read it all again but replacing "3D" with "AI". Please don't recommend computer-specific books. The question is about the foundation to be learned before using the machine. Also, if possible, please keep the list brief; I plan to order one book on each subject but no more than that for now. Excuse me for any English mistakes, it's not my first language. Thank you.

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