Knuth's Art of Computer Programming Vol. 4

_mutators writes "bookpool.com has posted an excerpt from Knuth's long awaited The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 4. It is very short and discusses combinatorial searching. But when will it be published? Bookpool does not hazard a guess."

Comments

Still Waiting

[Detritus]

When I bought Volume 3, about 20 years ago, it included a postcard that the buyer could mail to the publisher, to be added to a mailing list for notification when Volume 4 was published. I sent in the postcard.

I'm still waiting.

Re:Still Waiting

[Animats]

In 1967, you could order and prepay for all six volumes, to be delivered as published. At a good price, too. I wonder how many people are still waiting.

Re:Many own, few read

[cecom]

While I was growing up in Eastern Europe, it was completely impossible to find any of the volumes. They weren't available for sale and almost all copies had been stolen from the libraries (well, not exactly "stolen" but many people forgot to return the book and would much prefer to pay the library fine).

I eventually managed to get a hold of "Searching and Sorting" for a couple of days and I tried to read it. Needless to say, I didn't get far. One needs months to consume the whole thiing :-)

When I moved to the US, the first thing I did was to buy the series. I couldn't believe that it was actually available in stores! I have to admit though, I still haven't read the three volumes completely - ah, I miss the enthusiasm of my youth.

Didn't somebody say that one should never attempt to read the whole thing ? One should turn to a specific section and read it only when the need arises. That makes me feel better :-)

Re:Many own, few read

[CEHT]

Reading all volumes is one thing. Try reading them and finish all the exercises is another.

There's a fun bit in

[multiplexo]

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross where one of the characters reveals that the reason why Knuth hasn't released volume 4 is that it contains a hack that allows you to solve non-deterministic polynomial (NP) problems in polynomial time. This is such a huge secret that the world's intelligence agencies, who already know how to do this, have an agreement with Professor Knuth where as long as he doesn't publish volume 4 they won't render him metabolically challenged (i.e, "dead".

The Atrocity Archives is a way cool book, I heartily recommend it to /. geeks. Stross used to work as a programmer/sysadmin so it's a lot of fun if you've ever worked in IT.