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Title: C++ Plus Data Structures by Nell Dale ISBN: 0-7637-0481-4 Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers Pub. Date: 13 November, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $87.95

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Average Customer Rating: 2.09 (22 reviews)

Rating: 2
Summary: Night and Day
Comment: Please understand these are not the comments of a bitter student, but an A one, and a good programmer too.

If you liked Dale's first book, "Programming and Problem Solving with C++", I believe you will be deeply disappointed with this one. Maybe the difference is in the Co-Authors? While "Programming and Problem Solving with C++" is clear and concise learning tool with great examples, I have found C++ Plus Data Structures to be difficult to read and full of errors. The examples in this book are somewhat descent but have been ruined by constant errors. I have since read other books that give much better perspective. If you read this book during a second semester course, you are sure to leave still wondering to yourself "what the heck is a template".

Rating: 1
Summary: A textbook for what?
Comment: I just got complained about not following this textbook in the course of "Data structure". In the first six weeks of this semester, I have to stuff the students with supplementary materials about how to define a class, how to use a class in a program, what is the relatioship between class and object, what is the hell "abstract data type" thing to do with class, why use private access control while we want to know something. All these things are not supposed to cover in a semester for this course, I guess. However, most of my students have only "heard of" class and "public, private, protected", etc, which they had in their CS1/CS2 courses. After the first homework to learn how to define a class and use it a program, we are hoping we can go straightly with the five sructures. But surprisely from chapter 3, I found that I am preparing a "System Analysis and Design" class or maybe a "Software Engineering" class.

Sometime, I got stuck on the black-board, because I suddenly realized that the codes I just wrote down on the black-board contains infinite loop. For instance, this one on page150 in the third edition, quote:
"Examine this algorithm carefully and convince yourself that it is correct. Try cases where you are deleting the first item and the last item.
void SortedType::DeleteItem(ItemType item) {
int location = 0;
while(item.ComparedTo(info[location]) != EQUAL)
location++;
for(int index = location+1; index info[index-1] = info[index];
length--;
}
"
I am just wondering whether the authors have tried themselves to see what if this code is used to delete an item NOT in the list at all, and what if the list is thought to be empty but the item at the first slot of the array is coincide with "item"? Erros like these exist many places.

I personally dislike the textbook mostly because of its style. The authors use the same methodology in wrting the textbook for "Computer Science Illuminated", in which a lot of things are menioned but not detailed, and a (coding, logical, and presenting) style is not kept and changed without smooth transition for the treating similar things. This is especially the case in the chapters of Chapter 5, Chapter 7 and Chapter 8" when dealing with recurssively implementions of those structures.

Rating: 1
Summary: *NOT* an Excellent Second Semester Text!
Comment: Like another reviewer, I used this required text in a data structures course at the University of Maryland. I attend the University of Maryland through UMUC, the online unit of the school, so having a good text is very important. Unlike the other reviewer for the University of Maryland, I very much disliked this book.

A prerequisite to this course is an introductory C++ course that uses "Programming and Problem Solving with C++" which Nell Dale co-authored. I found "Programming and Problem Solving" to be pretty good and I earned a strong 'A' in the course.

This book however was awful. Put simply, the material was too difficult to understand. My average at the end of the course would have earned me an F if the final grades hadn't been curved, which gave me a B.

Perhaps this material is too complex for a one-semester course. I am unable to make this call since I still don't understand any of it. Regardless, the book was written to teach various concepts in a one-semester course and it fails to do much else than to frustrate the student.

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