"Just as natural pearls grow from grains of sand that irritate oysters, programming pearls have grown from real problems that have irritated real programmers. With origins beyond solid engineering, in the realm of insight and creativity, Bentley's pearls offer unique and clever solutions to those nagging problems. Illustrated by programs designed as much for fun as for instruction, the book is filled with lucid and witty descriptions of practical programming techniques and fundamental design principles. It is not at all surprising that Programming Pearls has been so highly valued by programmers at every level of experience"--Book jacket.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I: Preliminaries. Cracking the oyster -- Aha! Algorithms -- Data structures programs -- Writing correct programs -- A small matter of programming -- Part II: Performance. Perspective on performance -- The back of the envelope -- Algorithm design techniques -- Code tuning -- Squeezing space -- Part III: The product. Sorting -- A sample problem -- Searching -- Heaps -- Strings of Pearls.

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