Abstract
Over the past twenty-five years or so Saddleback search has been used as an paradigm of how methods of formal program construction can quickly lead to a simple and effective algorithm for searching an ordered table. In this paper we revisit the problem and show that saddleback search is not in fact the best algorithm when one dimension of the table is much smaller than the other. The paper is structured in the form of a classroom discussion involving a teacher and four very clever students.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Backhouse, R.: Program Construction and Verification. Int. Series in Computer Science. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1986)
Dijkstra, E.W.: The Saddleback Search. Note EWD-934 (1985), URL: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/index09xx.html
Gries, D.: The Science of Programming. Springer, Heidelberg (1981)
Graham, R.L., Knuth, D.E., Patashnik, O.: Concrete Mathematics. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1989)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bird, R.S. (2006). Improving Saddleback Search: A Lesson in Algorithm Design. In: Uustalu, T. (eds) Mathematics of Program Construction. MPC 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4014. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11783596_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11783596_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-35631-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-35632-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)