Data Structures and the Standard Template Library,   ISBN:9780072369656

Customer Rating: 

Paid about $100 dollars for this book only to find more bugs than a rainforest; frustrating since the author teaches at the university level but the code resembles that of a novice programmer.
Do yourself a favor and go with another book. You're literally better off
crumpling your cash money and throwing it in the trash rather than buying this disappointment.

Customer Rating: 

This may possibly be the worst programming book I've ever seen. The author has a habbit of talking about something, assuming you already have the knowledge, and then explaining it later, sometimes chapters later. Similarly, when using a class, Collins will state what the class is supposed to do, but not include the implementation until later, which would be good, but you've already been bombarded with so much other stuff you forget what the thing did in the first place. There are also no full examples included with several sections of the book, which are definately needed to learn the material.

Finally, when it comes to the data structures (most of the book), Collins explains what they are, and shows pieces of code, but never full implementations. For example, he shows how to adjust a heap, and delete nodes from a heap, but not how to start from scratch. Also, he uses templates containing classes without telling the reader what they mean.

I am currently a sophmore in a data structures class, and have talked with at least 5 students in my class. All of them agree that the book is absolutely worthless, as it only gives partial information that's hard to understand. If you're a professor, please think twice about choosing this book.