The first test will be given in class on Friday, February 20. The test will cover everything that we have done from the beginning of the term through class on Monday, February 16. This includes exceptions and the try..catch..finally statement; the analysis of algorithms; recursion; linked lists; the concept of abstract data types; and -- possibly -- stacks. The reading for this material is Sections 8.3, 8.6, 9.1, 9.2, and the beginning of 9.3 in the textbook. We also talked about a few things that were not in this reading: Javadoc, interfaces, and doubly linked lists.
You can expect a variety of questions on the test. There will be some definitions and essay-type questions. There will be one or two questions that ask you to analyze the run time of some code. Some questions will ask you to write code segments or methods or possibly even complete classes. There might also be some questions that ask you to read some code and figure out what it does.
Here are some terms and ideas that you should be familiar with:
Javadoc comments using an interface to express common features of several classes implementing an interface exceptions how exception handling compared to other ways of dealing with errors the basic exception classes, Exception and RuntimeException common exceptions such as NullPointerException checked exceptions and mandatory exception handling specific checked exceptions such as IOException and FileNotFoundException throwing an exception handling exceptions: the try..catch statement the finally clause in a try statement, and why it might be used questions of efficiency of a program run-time analysis of algorithms worst-case analysis and average case analysis "big Theta" and "big Oh" notation ( Θ(f(n)) and O(f(n)) ) big Theta and big Oh "ignore constant multiples and lower order terms" log2(n) and how it arises in analysis of some algorithms comparing Θ(n) to Θ(log(n)), or Θ(n2) to Θ(n*log(n)) selection sort and insertion sort have run time &Theta(n2) QuickSort has average case run time &Theta(n*log(n)) stable sorting algorithms, and why stability is desirable recursion; recursive methods; direct recursion and indirect recursion base case of a recursion maze-solving and similar recursions (including MineSweeper) infinite recursion, and why "marking" locations as already visited is important the QuickSort recursive algorithm the basic idea of QuickSortStep (but not the detailed code) the general idea of why QuickSort has average case run time Θ(n*log(n)) the worst case run time of QuickSort linked data structures understand names such as "employee.boss.name" and "node.next.next" simple linked lists the head of a list; why you always need to keep a pointer to the head traversing a linked list; using a "runner" to move down the list the meaning of "while (runner != null)" and "runner = runner.next" adding a node to the head of a list why working at the head of a list is often a special case inserting a node into the middle of the list deleting a node from a list using a "prev" pointer in addition to "runner", such as when deleting a node doubly-linked lists Abstract Data Types (ADTs) alternative implementations of ADTs relation of ADTs to interfaces and abstract classes the "Stack" ADT and how it can be implemented as an array or as a linked list the push and pop operations on a stack