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In the book Coders at Work, Peter Seibel asked a number of famous programmers, including Knuth, if they had read all of TAoCP. Only one said that he had. Knuth, likely with tongue in cheek, said that he had not. But of course, he wrote it, so apparently he is not counting that.

I have read some sections in great detail, e.g., the section on multi-precision arithmetic. This was essential for writing floating point libraries.




The multiple-precision arithmetic section of mine is easily found by looking at the colour on the edge of those pages. There is no better treatment of this subject out there.


As far as I know, the section on random number generation is the only treatment of that subject anywhere, better or worse.


I don't think that this is quite true.

On page 189 of Volume 2 (Third edition) there are two paragraphs discussing previous literature, including bibliographies. I do recall prior to the publication of Vol 2 that there were numerous ACM articles discussing this topic.

But Knuth's exposition is certainly comprehensive compared to anything else.

(But I don't see anything about CSPRNG)




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