Caveats

This is a catalog of algorithmic problems. It is not a cookbook. It cannot be because there are too many possible recipes and too many possible variations on what those want to eat.   My goal is to aim you in the right direction so that you can solve your own problems. I point out the issues you are likely to encounter along the way, problems that you are going to have to work out for yourself. In particular:

• For each problem, I suggest algorithms and directions to attack it. These recommendations are based on my experiences and study and aimed towards what I see as typical applications. I felt it was more important to make concrete recommendations for the masses rather than to try to cover all possible situations. If you don't want to follow my advice, don't follow my advice. But before you ignore me, make sure you understand the reasoning behind my recommendations and can articulate a reason why your application violates my assumptions.    
•   The implementations I recommend are not necessarily complete solutions to your problem. I point to an implementation whenever I feel it might be more useful to someone than just a textbook description of the algorithm. Some programs are useful only as models for you to write your own codes. Others are embedded in large systems and so might be too painful to extract and run on their own. Assume that all of them contain bugs. Many are quite serious, so beware.
• Please respect the licensing conditions for any implementations you use commercially. Many of these codes are not in the public domain and have restrictions. See Section for a further discussion of this issue.
• I would be interested in hearing about your experiences with my recommendations, both positive and negative. I would be especially interested in learning about any other implementations that you know about. Feel free to drop me a line at algorith@cs.sunysb.edu.