Undergraduate computer science students and practicing professionals interested in object-oriented programming are the intended audience for this book. The book has two purposes: it is intended as both a study of applied object-oriented component design and a treatise on object structures. The author uses well-known data structures, because professionals will find it easier to learn object-oriented programming by practicing on something they are familiar with, and students will be able to use the skills they acquire in the development of large software systems.

Gore has chosen Eiffel as the language for this text because it is a purely object-oriented programming language designed specifically for software engineering. It combines simplicity and power with pragmatism, and is a suitable vehicle for learning about object structures.

The book is divided into four parts and four appendices. Part 1 covers basic elements of the object-oriented methodology and the Eiffel language. The author uses the well-known Pair class as an example.

Part 2 is devoted to linear object structures. It covers arrays; lists, implemented both as arrays and as linked structures; and stacks and queues, which are implemented in three different ways, namely, using lists, arrays, and linked representation. The last chapter in this part presents the design and implementation of a postfix calculator and an infix calculator.

Part 3 concentrates on object structures organized in ways that make it easy to find specific objects. The author discusses dictionaries and associations as well as various sorting algorithms (insertion sort, bubble sort, and selection sort). He then presents faster sorting methods, namely merge sort and quicksort, and faster dictionaries that use binary search and hashing.

The last part focuses on trees: binary search trees, heaps, and B-trees. A dictionary is used as a straightforward example.

Every chapter ends with a summary and many appropriate exercises. The appendices cover some test classes, essential predefined classes, Eiffel syntax, and the use of three different Eiffel compilers. The bibliography is short but contains almost all the well-known books on Eiffel and algorithms. The index is adequate.

The book covers its subjects straightforwardly, with plenty of illustrations. It fulfills its purpose and will be useful for both students and professionals who want to learn object-oriented principles and Eiffel.