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In general, a program is an algorithm only if it stops eventually [14] —even though infinite loops may sometimes prove desirable. Boolos, Jeffrey & 1974, 1999 define an algorithm to be an explicit set of instructions for determining an output, that can be followed by a computing machine or a human who could only carry out specific elementary ...
The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP) is a comprehensive monograph written by the computer scientist Donald Knuth presenting programming algorithms and their analysis. Volumes 1–5 are intended to represent the central core of computer programming for sequential machines.
Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. [1] [2] It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of procedures, by writing code in one or more programming languages.
An algorithm is fundamentally a set of rules or defined procedures that is typically designed and used to solve a specific problem or a broad set of problems.. Broadly, algorithms define process(es), sets of rules, or methodologies that are to be followed in calculations, data processing, data mining, pattern recognition, automated reasoning or other problem-solving operations.
This definition is given together with a formal definition of programs (and models of computation), allowing to formally define the notion of implementation, that is when a program implements an algorithm.
The recursive program above is tail-recursive; it is equivalent to an iterative algorithm, and the computation shown above shows the steps of evaluation that would be performed by a language that eliminates tail calls. Below is a version of the same algorithm using explicit iteration, suitable for a language that does not eliminate tail calls.
An alternative to using mathematical pseudocode (involving set theory notation or matrix operations) for documentation of algorithms is to use a formal mathematical programming language that is a mix of non-ASCII mathematical notation and program control structures. Then the code can be parsed and interpreted by a machine.
Dynamic programming is a systematic technique in which a complex problem is decomposed recursively into smaller, overlapping subproblems for solution. Dynamic programming stores the results of the overlapping sub-problems locally using an optimization technique called memoization .