CPSC 225 Exam 1 Review Information

The exam will be held during the Thursday lab period in Rosenberg 009. Take care of any necessary business before class so that you do not need to leave the room during the exam.

Though it will be in the lab, the exam will be written (not on the computer). It will be closed book, but you may have one page of notes which you will turn in with your exam. Important: "One page" means one side of an 8.5x11" piece of paper — hardcopies only, you may not use a tablet or laptop or other device to access your notes during the exam. (It's fine to create your notes electronically if you want, just make sure you print them out before class!) In addition, your notes must be personally prepared by you — you may not use generative AI to produce a set of notes, copy another student's notes, or make copies of your own for others. (Creating your own notes is an essential part of the learning process — deciding what to include requires engagement with the material which reinforces understanding and improves long-term retention of the material, provides an opportunity for review in order to identify gaps in your knowledge in time to ask questions before the exam, increases confidence in what you do know, and encourages taking ownership of your own learning.)

The exam will cover material up to and including searching/sorting/shuffling, but not linked lists. Specific topics are listed below.

Topics

Correctness, Robustness, and Testing

• preconditions, class invariants, invariants (what they are; when to write them; how to check/enforce them)
• robustness (when, where, and what to check; how to handle)
• exceptions (throwing and catching; when to use)
• assertions (syntax; when to use)
• black box vs white box testing
• testing (what test cases are, identifying test cases for a method, being thorough but not redundant)
• identifying typical special cases

Arrays

• working with partially-full arrays (the necessary variables; typical operations like retrieve, insert, remove, visiting all of the elements; how to figure out algorithms for new operations)
• working with dynamic arrays (how to grow and shrink)
• implementing operations with arrays

Searching, Sorting, Shuffling

• sequential search, binary search: the idea of the algorithms, when each is applicable
• sorting: the idea of the algorithms for insertion sort and selection sort

"The idea of the algorithm" means that you can describe the algorithm, carry it out by hand on an example, and implement it.

Questions

Types of questions you might encounter include (but are not limited to):

• defining a term
• identifying preconditions for a method or class invariants for a class
• writing code to check preconditions, class invariants, and/or other invariants for a method
• identifying test cases for a method
• adding error-checking and handling to code
• tracing the flow-of-control in code that involves exceptions
• tracing code involving arrays to determine what it does, or where it goes wrong
• writing code or a method to manipulate an array, including handling special cases (use pictures to help you work it out!)
• writing part or all of a class for some kind of collection (e.g. a deck of cards) using an array to store the elements in the collection

When asked to write code, you will be graded on syntax — while you won't lose points for occasional typo sorts of errors (like a missing semicolon) which would be easily caught by Eclipse, frequent or major mistakes which indicate that you don't know what the correct syntax should be or would get in the way of being able to produce a working program (even with the assistance of Eclipse) will lose points.