Introduction to programming by abstract data types. Incl. 1 CD-ROM (Q2756963)

The book is intended as an introduction to programming for computer science students. Chapter 1 (10 pages) introduces the notions of programming languages, syntax and semantics. Chapter 2 (11 pages) introduces the notions of algorithms, primitive recursion and terms. Chapter 3 (2 pages) is devoted to program development. Chapter 4 (116 pages) constitutes the bulk of the book; it introduces and illustrates the specification and implementation of abstract data types. Finally, Chapter 5 (10 pages) discusses object-oriented implementation. The book contains a CD-ROM allowing the execution of the specifications of Chapter 4. NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEChapters 1 to 3 and 5 are too short for a reader without background knowledge. Chapter 4 treats in great detail the specification and implementation of five elementary abstract data types: list, stack, queue, tree and table; it contains no original material since these data types have been discussed abundantly in the literature. NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe specification method presented is based on the use of constructors. It consists in identifying the carriers of a data type with the constructor terms of a term language and in defining the operations other than constructors as primitive recursive functions. This specification method - known in the literature as the constructive specification method -- is less abstract than the classical specification methods and does not allow the specification of data types such as set. These restrictions are not mentioned in the book. More importantly, while the specifications and implementations are described in great detail, the problem of the correctness of these implementations is passed in silence. NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe formal parts of the book are often imprecise. An example is the following definition: The implementation of a data type is the realisation in a datastructure, taking the specified properties of the operation symbols into consideration. A constructor is defined (!) as follows: A constructor is necessary for creating the canonical terms of an ADT. The readability of the book is moreover impaired by the poor English style.