CS 120 - High-Level Programming I

"There is no doubt that learning the fundamentals of a programming language is not as much fun as writing programs. However, not knowing the fundamentals makes writing programs a lot less fun." -- Kenneth A. Reek

Information

If you have any questions about any assignment, please post the questions in the CS120 Forum on the CS120 Moodle website. There are many people that can answer your question. If you just send your question to me in an email, it may be a while until (or if) I get back to you. Also, if you have a question about the assignment, it's very likely that many other students have the same question and they will benefit from the posted answers.

• Syllabus
• Office hours (office location)
• Important dates for this semester
• Digipen attendance policy
• Academic Support Center schedule
• Wireless access at Digipen.

References

• Answers to Selected Exercises from the textbook.
• Code Quality Guidelines
• Checklist
• Delivering code
• Operator precedence chart with a simple ASCII chart and common printf formatting characters.
• Character representations ASCII, binary, octal, decimal, and hexadecimal
• ASCII table On the web
• comp.lang.c FAQ Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ List) FAQ by section.
• C Programming.com Another site with a good FAQ
• Documentation:
  • GCC compilers
  • GNU Documentation Online Includes documentation for other GNU tools cvs, gdb, etc.
  • An Introduction to GCC This is a PDF document that shows how to use the command line compiler. (It doesn't teach C/C++).

    C Library References:

    • The C Library Reference Guide This site contains information about C and the Standard Library.
    • C Standard Library Another library reference.
    • The GNU C Library Lots of information about C functions and systems programming
    • List of C functions on Wikipedia. Also, some background on the library.
    • Linux manual (man) pages in HTML Not for the faint of heart, but still a one-stop-shopping place.

  • Some help with the command prompt in Windows This is from Prof. Dee's lectures in GAM100.
  • Comparing and Merging Files with GNU diff and patch A PDF document containing more detailed information about this family of utilities.
  • Incompatibilities Between ISO C and ISO C++ This is rather advanced, but some of the information may be useful, especially the C90 vs. C99 stuff.

• (Mostly) Free Text Editors
  • Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement) running under the MS Windows environment.
  • Geany A cross-platform text editor (Windows, OS X, Linux, and others) that also works as an IDE (Integrated Development Environment).
  • Sublime is a really nice source code editor (not free), which supports several programming languages, and is cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux).
  • jEdit is a mature programmer's text editor with hundreds (counting the time developing plugins) of person-years of development behind it. Written in Java so it runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac at least.
  • EditPad Lite is a general-purpose text editor, designed to be small and compact, yet offer all the functionality you expect from a basic text editor. Windows-only.
  • Crimson Editor is a simple source code editor for Windows.
• The Jargon File Want to know where foo came from or thousands of other computer-related terms? How about bogosity, crufty, FUD, nyetwork, RTFM, Vulcan nerve pinch, or Wintendo?
• TIOBE Programming Community Index Don't take this too seriously, but it's somewhat interesting.
• The tablen program. Detects tabs and long lines in files. You MUST run this on EVERY programming assignment. Here's a binary version for Linux. (The Windows version also seems to work fine under Linux with Wine). Here is a binary version for Mac OS X.
• The dumpit program. Dumps files in hexadecimal. Here's a binary version for Linux. Here is a binary version for Mac OS X.

• Style Guide for CS120
• Download the Cygwin64 programs and put them on your computer.

  The zip file contains version 5.4.0 of the GNU C/C++ compilers and command-line utilities. The zip file is about 530 MB and extracts to about 1.5 GB. Creates a folder named cygwin64 on the C: drive.

• Don't forget to add C:\cygwin64\bin directory to your PATH. Windows 7. If you're new to computers or Windows, there's a nicer GUI (Graphical User Interface) program called Windows Environment Variables Editor that makes it easier to manipulate the PATH.
• Understanding the PATH variable from wikipedia.
• Editing the PATH variable on Windows 7, 8, and 10.
• Once you've got Cygwin installed and in your PATH, you can type this to see a better view of your PATH from the command line:

  path | tr ; "\n"

  This will list all of the directories in the PATH with each on a separate line. That is:

  Token	Meaning
  path	Displays the PATH as one long line
  |	A vertical bar (pipe symbol), usually on the key with the backslash (\)
  tr	The translate command
  ;	A semi-colon (usually to the right of the letter 'L' on the keyboard). On Linux and Mac OS X it's a colon instead.
  "\n"	A double quote, backslash, lowercase letter 'N', double quote

• GNU gcc for non-Windows users:

  Version 5.4.0 is what is installed with Cygwin on the computers at Digipen. That's also the version in the download for Cygwin. For non-Windows users, if you can't get version 5.4.0, any 5.x.x version will probably be fine. We won't be using any of the advanced features of C that are in 5.x, but you do want to have the closest version possible so that you will get the same errors and warnings that 5.4.0 emits.
  
  For Linux people, I recommend Linux Mint 18, which comes with version 5.4.0, although any distribution that includes that compiler version will work.

Notes

• Fundamentals
  • Creating a simple program Editing, compiling, linking, executing
• Formatted Input/Output Introduction to printf, scanf, format specifiers
• Expressions and Operators Precedence, associativity, order of operations, assignments, side-effects
• Conditionals Booleans, relational/logical operators, if, else, switch, case
• Iteration Looping and repetitions, while, do, for
• Functions Prototypes, parameters, arguments, call-by-value, scope, lifetime
  • Larger programs multiple file programs, separate compilation/linking
• Topic: Random Numbers Pseudo-random number generators (PRNG), seeding (Pages 686-687 in the textbook)
• Arrays one-dimensional, sizeof operator, subscripting
• Data Types integral types, signed/unsigned integers, long/short integers, characters, floating point types, long doubles
• Pointers address operator, indirection/dereference operator, arrays vs. pointers
• Strings string literals, variables, NULL character, character arrays vs. strings, string functions
• File I/O FILE, opening/closing, reading/writing text files, redirection
• Structures struct, pointers to structures, structure operators
• Dynamic Memory Allocation malloc/free
• Complex declarations Pointers, arrays, and functions.

• These topics will NOT be on the final exam:
• Introduction to linked-lists A dynamic and flexible data structure.
• More Arrays multi-dimensional
• Variadic Functions like printf and scanf
• More Structures alignment, unions, bit-fields.
• Runtime Environment Command line arguments, environment variables, exec functions
• RunTime Library Lots of functions for you to learn.

Homework Assignments

• You should be compiling and running all of the examples on the Notes pages above after each lecture. This will prepare you for the labs, exams, and programming homework. You should have reviewed the material below before the class on the date given, if there is class that day.

Assignment	You should have completed the work by the end of this date. (You aren't turning anything in for these assignments.)
Read Chapter one in the textbook.	Friday, September 9, 2016.
1. Read chapters 1 and 2 from An Introduction to GCC 2. Install Cygwin on your own computer (if you intend on programming on your own computer)	Monday, September 12, 2016.
Chapter 2: Exercises #1 - 10	Friday, September 16, 2016.
Chapter 3: Exercises #1, #2, #4, #5	Friday, September 23, 2016.
Study quiz #1
Study quiz #2
Chapter 4: Exercises #1, #9, #10, #11, #12, #14, #15	Wednesday, September 28, 2016.
Chapter 5: Exercises #1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #7, #8, #10, #11	Friday, September 30, 2016
Study quiz #3
Chapter 6: Exercises #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #8, #11, #14	Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Chapter 9: Exercises #1, #2, #3, #4, #7, #8, #9	Friday, October 7, 2016
Study quiz #4
Study quiz #5
Chapter 8: Exercises #1, #2, #3, #5,	Friday, October 21, 2016
Chapter 7: Exercises #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #9 through #14	Monday, October 24, 2016
Chapter 11: Exercises #1, #2, #3, #5, #6	Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Chapter 12: Exercises #1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #8	Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Chapter 13: Exercises #1, #2, #5, #7, #8, #9, #10, #12, #14	Friday, November 4, 2016
Study quiz #6
Study quiz #7
Chapter 22: Exercises #1, #2, #3, #11, #12, #13	Monday, November 7, 2016
Familiarize yourself with these functions: sprintf, strcat, strcpy, fopen, fclose, fread, malloc, memset	Thursday, November 10, 2016
Study quiz #8
Chapter 16: Exercises #1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #9	Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Chapter 17.1-17.6: Exercises #1, #2, #3, #4, #7	Friday, November 18, 2016
Study quiz #9
Study quiz #10
Read section 8.2 in the textbook
Read The Perils Of Java Schools This is why Digipen grads are sought after by many of the biggest software companies around. If you want an "easy" CS degree, go somewhere else. There are plenty of schools to choose from. Here's another good article from Joel that maybe should help you appreciate why we do it this way.	Wednesday, December 7, 2016

• Programming Assignments

  • Online Submission Page - Submit all labs and programming assignments from this page. This requires your "real" Digipen username and password. (Check to see if you are in the classlist for the submission server.)
  • You can reach the Returned Folders using a browser from here.
  • Spreadsheet to show you how to calculate your grade.
  • Programming Assignment #1 - Due Wednesday, October 12, at 10:00 pm
  • Programming Assignment #2 - Due Tuesday, October 25, at 10:00 pm
  • Programming Assignment #3 - Due Wednesday, November 2, at 10:00 pm
  • Programming Assignment #4 - Due Tuesday, November 8, at 10:00 pm
  • Programming Assignment #5 - Due Wednesday, November 16, at 10:00 pm
  • Programming Assignment #6 - Due Thursday, December 1, at 10:00 pm

• Lab and Practice Assignments

  Data for the lab assignments
  Data for the practice assignments

• What's the difference between Practice, Labs, and Assignments?
• What you have learned These are some of the topics that we've covered this semester.

• Over-the-break Challenges

  • Here

Additional Reading Assignments (required)

• If programming is so hard, why do we do it?. (If this paper doesn't describe you or the work you want to do in life, then you are in the wrong place.)
• The difference between the amateur and the professional programmer.
• Elements of Style (It's an old book, so you can find it really cheap on the Internet somewhere.) We are not following this style guide exactly, but it explains why companies have style guides.
  • Chapter 1 - Style and Program Organization
  • Chapter 2 - File Basics, Comments, and Program Headings
  • Chapter 3 - Variable Names
  • Chapter 4 - Statement Formatting
    A small teaser about indenting and braces. (BTW, ANSI with 2 space tabs is the One True Way™.)
• Google C++ Style Guide Another example for you to see. Yes, it's for C++, but a lot of it applies to C. We are not following this, but it's good for you to see how one of the biggest developer firms set their styles.
• Style Guide for CS120 This is the Official CS120 Style Guide^®

Interesting Reading (optional for everyone)

• The Development of the C Language
• Classroom Seating Position and College Grades Of course, not everyone can sit in the front, but you should keep this in mind if you're trying to do your best in college.

• The Jargon File Want to know where foo came from or thousands of other computer-related terms? How about bogosity, crufty, FUD, nyetwork, RTFM, Vulcan nerve pinch, or Wintendo?

• Chapter 1 - Style and Program Organization
• Chapter 2 - File Basics, Comments, and Program Headings
• Chapter 3 - Variable Names
• Chapter 4 - Statement Formatting
• Chapter 5 - Statement Details
• Chapter 6 - Preprocessor
• Chapter 7 - Directory Organization and Makefile Style
• Chapter 8 - User-Friendly Programming
• Chapter 9 - Rules