January 16, 2007

Getting started

• Syllabus
• What you need to do
• Two tests, one final exam, one quiz consisting of 5-10 questions per week.
• Reading List
• Writing assignments
• expect one every 2 weeks
• at least one major article/paper

"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man." Bacon, Essays, Of Studies

A question about the implementation of a programming language

The author states:

"Computer programs are practical magic. To craft a program is to construct a complex and beautiful incantation; to run a program is to discover with delight that the magic actually works!"

Here are some implementation questions or questions about how the magic works:

• What really happens when a function is called?
• What happens when a function terminates?
• What happens when an exception occurs during the execution of a function?

Ahead

• For next class (Thursday, January 18, 2007)
  • Read and be prepared to discuss Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the text.
  • Read and be prepared to discuss Items 1. and 2. in the Reading List
• For class one week from today (Tuesday, January 23, 2007)
  • Read and be prepared to discuss in class Chapter 3 from the text
  • Complete exercises by class time:
    • Page 24. Exercise 1. a,b,d,e,and f
    • Page 25. Exercise 2 corresponding to a,b,d,e, and f of Exercise 1
    • Page 25. Exercise 3 corresponding to a and f of Exercise 1
    • Page 39 and 40. Exercise 1
    • Page 40. Exercise 3
    • page 40. Exercise 4.

Programming Assignment.

Due January 23, 2007. Write a program in the language of your choice that takes its input from stdin and puts its output to stdout.

The program expects the input to be text and it removes all "blank lines" (lines that only contain a newline character) from the input. The output, then, is a copy of the input except that the output contains no "blank lines" as defined above.

Include appropriate documentation as specified in the department's documentation guidelines.

Test the program adequately using the source file as input, a file that starts with a blank line followed by a few lines that aren't blank and that ends with a blank line, a file containing only blank lines, a file with no blank lines, and the executable version of the file. If the name of the executable file is noBlank and xyz is the name of a file that will be modified by the program, then use noBlank < xyz >xyz.test.

Using one email message send me a copy of the source, a script of your tests, and copies of the output files.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Ernest Ackermann Department of Computer Science, Mary Washington College
CPSC 401 | CPSC 470S

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