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Reviewer: Fernando Berzal

This CD-ROM basically contains the C++ code that implements the many numerical algorithms in the third edition of the outstanding Numerical Recipes (NR) volume [1]. However, the CD-ROM does not contain the text from the book, just links to a Web site where you need a printed book coupon or a paid electronic subscription in order to be able to read the text where the different algorithms are described. This CD-ROM provides just a single-user license of the code, for personal use; this license allows you to build executable applications incorporating the code, provided that "the application is noncommercial (i.e., does not involve the selling or licensing of the application for a fee)." As some critics have argued, in some sense, "the NR license is the RIAA of the scientific community" [2] and a GNU or Apache license would probably be better for your own projects. The 474 KB of C++ code is completely contained in 167 header files with no underlying .c or .cpp extension code files. The 19,000 lines of text contain 16,500 executable sentences and only a meager 0.4 percent of comments, whereas a figure between 15 and 25 percent is more common in actual production code. Moreover, given the numerical nature of NR algorithms, its complexity is notably higher than usual, using the number of execution paths through a function as a measure of complexity, as defined by Steve McConnell [3]. On average, there are 19.9 statements per method versus five to ten in standard object-oriented systems, and a maximum complexity of 74, while a number between two and eight is the standard in business applications in order to make them testable. In other words, you can hardly understand the source code, unless you own a copy of the book or buy the electronic subscription to its electronic version. Apart from the C++ code corresponding to the third edition of the book, the CD-ROM also contains all source code from its previous editions: the C, C++, Fortran 77, and Fortran 90 implementations for the second edition published 15 years ago, as well as the Pascal, BASIC, Modula2, and Common Lisp versions corresponding to the original edition of the book, which was published in 1989. The CD-ROM also includes some additional libraries (in C, Fortran, and even Algol 60!), plus hundreds of megabytes of physically generated random bytes, in case anybody would need them. In short, this is a handy CD-ROM with working implementations for your personal quick-and-dirty projects, but it loses much of its value without the excellent volume [1] that explains what algorithms to employ, how to use them, and when not to do it. Online Computing Reviews Service