zamore lubomir bourdevmike demmermark handymichael hornand scott speigler developed basic java tutorialwhich ultimately led to java programming special thanks go to eric zamorewho contributed to the development of the java code examples in this book and to the initial designimplementationand testing of the net datastructures library of data structures and algorithms in java we are also grateful to vesselin arnaudov and ike shim for testing the current version of net datastructures many students and instructors have used the two previous editions of this book and their experiences and responses have helped shape this fourth edition there have been number of friends and colleagues whose comments have lead to improvements in the text we are particularly thankful to karen goodrichart moorsheaddavid mountscott smithand ioannis tollis for their insightful comments in additioncontributions by david mount to section and to several figures are gratefully acknowledged we are also truly indebted to the outside reviewers and readers for their copious commentsemailsand constructive criticismwhich were extremely useful in writing the fourth edition we specifically thank the following reviewers for their comments and suggestionsdivy agarwaluniversity of californiasanta barbaraterry andresuniversity of manitobabobby blumofeuniversity of texasaustinmichael clancyuniversity of californiaberkeleylarry davisuniversity of marylandscott drysdaledartmouth collegearup guhauniversity of central floridachris ingramuniversity of waterloostan kwasnywashington universitycalvin linuniversity of texas at austinjohn mark mercermcgill universitylaurent micheluniversity of connecticutleonard myerscalifornia polytechnic state universitysan luis obispodavid naumannstevens institute of technologyrobert pastelmichigan technological universitybina ramamurthysuny buffaloken slonnegeruniversity of iowac ravishankaruniversity of michiganval tannenuniversity of pennsylvaniapaul van arragonmessiah collegeand christopher wilsonuniversity of oregon the team at wiley has been great many thanks go to lilian bradypaul crockettsimon durkinlisa geefrank lymanmadelyn lesurehope millerbridget morriseyken santordan sayrebruce spatzdawn stanleyjeri warnerand bill zobrist the computing systems and excellent technical support staff in the departments of computer science at brown university and university of californiairvine gave us reliable working environments this manuscript was prepared primarily with the