COS 217

Midterm Exam 1

Monday, September 28, 10:40am - 11:30am

The exam will be given at in the following locations — double-check that you're attending in the right room for your precept section!

CS 104: P01, P02, P03, P04
CS 105: P05, P06
Friend 009: P07

Students who have testing accommodations should coordinate with Christopher Moretti (cmoretti@cs.princeton.edu) and Laura Cerrito (lcerrito@princeton.edu) to confirm alternate times and/or conditions.

Rules

You will have fifty minutes to complete the exam.

This will be a closed-book, closed-note exam, with the exception that a single one-sided study sheet will be allowed. The exam will emphasize application of concepts and not memorization, so you will be provided with information such as manual pages, C operator precedence tables, etc. if they are necessary. No electronic devices will be permitted to be used during the exam. No communication with any person will be permitted, with the exception of an instructor who will be available for clarifying questions outside the exam room. Some students may be taking this exam at a different time, so use discretion in discussing the contents of the exam with anyone until the sample solution has been posted.

The Princeton University Honor Code covers this exam. You will be required to write out in full and sign an honor code pledge that you have abided by these exam rules and restrictions. Any suspected violations must be reported to honor@princeton.edu — that there is proctoring does not abrogate your responsibilities under the Honor Code.

Topics

You will be responsible for material from the course through Tuesday of week 4 (and, thus, excluding Wednesday/Thursday of week 4), including the content of required readings, lectures, precepts, and assignments 0 and 1. All questions will assume the ArmLab/Linux/C/gcc217 environment unless otherwise stated.

Major topics include:

Number Systems
- Binary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal number systems
- Unsigned integers: finite representation and operations
- Signed integers: finite two's complement representation and operations
- Overflow
C Programming (ANSI C89 / ISO C90)
- The program preparation process: preprocess, compile, assemble, link
- Program structure: multi-file programs using header files
- Statements
- Operators
- Input/output: getchar(), putchar(), scanf(), printf(), fprintf()
- Primitive C Data types
- Basic variable declarations and definitions
- Process memory layout: text, stack, rodata sections
- Constants: #define, const variables, enumerations
- Basic function declarations and definitions
- Code documentation with appropriate comments
Programming techniques and tools
- git and source code management
- Deterministic finite-state automata (DFA)
- Modularity essentials: separation of interface and implementation

Questions from Previous Semesters

A supplementary way to prepare for the exam is to go over questions from previous COS 217 midterm exams. Note that the time you allocate for studying should not be solely focused on drilling past exams. Practicing exam questions should be done in tandem with studying your own notes, reviewing lecture and precept materials, etc.

Because of the change from 1 to 2 midterms, none of the released exams will exactly cover the material you are responsible for on this exam, so we suggest using the relevant problems diagnostically to identify and devote time to topics you are weakest on.

If you have any questions about whether the content of a question would be fair game for this year, please ask on Ed.