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Exclusive Excerpt from Volume 4 of The Art of Computer Programming
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Finally, the answer to one of computer science's most burning questions, "When is Volume 4 coming out?"
More than forty years in the making, the long-anticipated Volume 4 of The Art of Computer Programming is about to make its debut... in parts.
Rather than waiting for the complete book, Dr. Knuth and Addison-Wesley have elected to publish it in
installments ("fascicles") à la Charles Dickens.
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Dr. Knuth's original multi-volume work has long been recognized as the definitive description of classical computer science. Not simply a technical instruction manual as we so often see today, this expounds on the philosophy of programming. His work's breadth, clarity, accuracy and good humor has earned him mythical status. Who has not been told "Look in Knuth" when faced with one of the more gnarly computing problems. In fact, he has earned a spot in the Jargon File of hacker slang.
Appearing time and again on our Top 10 Books of the Last 10 Years lists, many readers have spoken about the profound personal influence of Knuth's work. Scientists have marveled at the beauty and elegance of his analysis, while programmers have successfully applied his "cookbook" solutions to their day-to-day problems. Over a million copies are in print, translated into six languages.
And we've all been waiting for Volume 4. To get the work out there more quickly, Knuth is releasing it in smaller chunks — approximately 128 pages per Fascicle book. In the final plan, all of these will be rolled up into the complete work of Volume 4 — look for it at Bookpool in the year 2007 (we're not taking pre-orders yet on that!).
The first two fascicles have been written and are waiting at the printer:
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Volume 4, Fascicle 2: Generating All Tuples and Permutations begins his treatment of how to generate all possibilities. Specifically, it discusses the generation of all n-tuples, then extends those ideas to all permutations. Such algorithms provide a natural means by which many of the key ideas of combinatorial mathematics can be introduced and explored. Knuth illuminates important theories by discussing related games and puzzles. Even serious programming can be fun.
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Volume 1, Fascicle 1: MMIX -- A RISC Computer for the New Millennium updates The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1, Third Edition: Fundamental Algorithms and ultimately will become part of the fourth edition of that book. Specifically, it provides a programmer's introduction to the long-awaited MMIX, a RISC-based computer that replaces the original MIX, and describes the MMIX assembly language. It also presents new material on subroutines, coroutines and interpretive routines.
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Volume 4, Fascicle 3: Generating All Combinations and Partitions. Estimated publication date July 2005.
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