Introduction to Algorithms
book on computer programming
Introduction to Algorithms is a book on computer programming by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein. The book is described by its publisher as "the leading algorithms text in universities worldwide as well as the standard reference for professionals". It is commonly cited as a reference for algorithms in published papers, with over 10,000 citations documented on CiteSeerX, and over 70,000 citations on Google Scholar as of 2024. The book sold half a million copies during its first 20 years, and surpassed a million copies sold in 2022. Its fame has led to the common use of the abbreviation "CLRS" (Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein), or, in the first edition, "CLR" (Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest).
In the preface, the authors write about how the book was written to be comprehensive and useful in both teaching and professional environments. Each chapter focuses on an algorithm, and discusses its design techniques and areas of application. Instead of using a specific programming language, the algorithms are written in pseudocode. The descriptions focus on the aspects of the algorithm itself, its mathematical properties, and emphasize efficiency.
Editions
The first edition of the textbook did not include Stein as an author, and thus the book became known by the initialism CLR. It included two chapters ("Arithmetic Circuits" and "Algorithms for Parallel Computers") that were dropped in the second edition.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1141518. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Introduction to Algorithms” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.