Conventions
Most of the conventions used in this book should be recognizable to those who work with computers to any extent. However, a few require some explanation.
- Bold italic
Nonintrinsic mathematical functions and mathematical variables appear in this font.
Constant width italicVariables from programs, names of datatypes (such as structure names), and defined constants appear in this font.
- Italic
Commands (as they would be typed in at a terminal), names of files and paths, operations of abstract datatypes, and other functions from programs appear in this font.
- lg x
This notation is used to represent the base-2 logarithm of x, log2 x. This is the notation used commonly in computer science when discussing algorithms; therefore, it is used in this book.