Exam study guide

You're having an in-class exam next Wednesday. Here's a summary of the kinds of questions and the topics that might show up. Use this information as you see fit.

• Closed-everything-except-your-brain (no calculator, no notes)
• General topics
  • data representation
  • addresses/pointers & memory in general
  • C
• My philosophy of in-class exams
  • Stuff that I want you to have in your head, not just your notes
  • Mostly "what" and "how", only a little bit of "why"
  • No tricks
  • I indicate what I think is most important via classroom topics, homework assignments, sample programs, quizzes
• What to study
  • homework assignments
  • quizzes
  • sample code (notably output.c, bitwise.c, strings.c, args.c, byte-counter.c, pointers.c, memory.c)
  • class notes)
  • backup reference material as needed: textbook readings)
• Types of questions
  • Short answers
  • Here's some code; what's the output?
  • Write this tiny amount of code to do X (never more than 3-4 lines)
  • That memory grid from the Moodle quiz
  • Wildcard (I reserve the right to come up with a different type of question, but see philosophy above)
• Integers
  • binary/decimal/hexadecimal notation (octal, though important, will not be on the exam)
  • two's complement representation
  • byte order (little-endian vs. big-endian)
• Characters
  • difference between characters and C char
  • codepoints vs. encodings
  • ASCII (chart will be provided)
  • UTF-8 encoding (chart will be provided)
  • UTF-16 BE and UTF-16 LE
• Don't forget: you can write your own experimental programs to see what happens when you do this or that
• C types
  • int vs. long (32-bit vs. 64-bit)
  • char *p vs. char p[10]
  • string literals: "Hello"
  • char literals: 'A', '\0', '\\', '\''
  • sizeof (don't confuse with strlen!)
• C I/O (input/output)
  • printf, %c, %s, %d, %x, %X, %p
  • [unlikely to be on the test] fopen, fclose, fread, fwrite, fgetc
• Null-terminated char strings
  • strlen
  • strcpy vs. strncpy (including what happens if source is longer than buffer in strncpy)
  • strcmp
  • printf %s vs. %p
• C pointers
  • & as unary "address-of" operator
  • * in type declarations
  • * as unary operator for dereferencing
  • assignment statements with pointers
• C bitwise operators
  • ~ (not)
  • & (and)
  • | (or)
  • ^ (exclusive or, also known as xor)
• C stuff that's pretty much the same as Java
  • if, else
  • &&, ||, !
  • while, for
  • {}, ()
  • +, -, / (int div), %
  • function signatures