Combinatorial algorithms
Donald L. Kreher, Douglas R. Stinson · ACM SIGACT News · 1999
Our objective in writing this book was to produce a general, introductory textbook on the subject o f combinatorial algorithms .Several textbooks on combinatorial algorithms were written in the 1970s , and are now out-of-date .More recent books on algorithms have either been general textbooks , or books on specialized topics, such as graph algorithms to name one example .We felt that a new textbook on combinatorial algorithms, that emphasizes the basic techniques of generation , enumeration and search, would be very timely.We have both taught courses on this subject, to undergraduate and graduate students i n mathematics and computer science, at Michigan Technological University and the University o f Nebraska-Lincoln.We tried to design the book to be flexible enough to be useful in a wide variet y of approaches to the subject .We have provided a reasonable amount of mathematical background where it is needed, sinc e an understanding of the algorithms is not possible without an understanding of the underlyin g mathematics .We give informal descriptions of the many algorithms in this book, along with mor e precise pseudo-code that can easily be converted to working programs .C implementations of al l the algorithms are available for free downloading from the websit e http ://www .math.mtu.edu/,-s,kreher/cages .html