Midterm - Study Guide

Resources and Online Notes

In addition to the material presented in Chapter's 1-5 of the textbook you may wish to look over the powerpoint hand-outs.

You can also refer to the C/C++ Reference guide at http://cppreference.com/ or you may wish to go through some of the sections (e.g. Introduction, Basics of C++, and Control Structures) of the online tutorial available at http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/

Topic List

Vocabulary - talking like a programmer....

Be able to answer questions such as a "What is", "Describe", "Explain", etc. or be able to write important information about each of the following

• main function
• Include directives, purpose, effect
• Comments, purpose of comments
• Indentation, purpose of indentation
• Compiling stages - input, output, and purpose of each stage: preprocessor, compiler, assembler, linker
• Types of errors - name of, description of, and example of each
• 3 things a variable's type determines
• 2 categories of types
• Built-in types, general differences; int, char, long, double, float, bool
• Result and side effect
• Operator precedence
• Operator associativity
• Implicit conversion, rules, in general
• Explicit conversion (cast)
• true and false with regard to expressions and integer values
• Literal, string literal
• Character and string literal - difference between
• Infinite loop
• Difference between having using namespace std, using std::cout, std::cout in a program
• How the << (output) operator behaves
• How the >> (input) operator behaves
• C++ String variable type
• Functions, what are they good for
• Functions, when should you write a function
• Function call
• Function declaration/prototype
• Function definition
• Function header
• Arguments in a function call
• Formal parameters of a function
• The return statement
• Parameter passing
• Call by value, call by reference, call by const reference; how each works, advantages, disadvantages, advantage of const reference
• Return by value, return by reference

Writing/Executing/Explaining Code - walking (coding) like a programmer...

You may be given a snipet of code to execute by hand and explain or you may be asked to write code relating to the items below

• Writing a simple, complete C++ program that could be compiled and run
• if, if/else, switch
• while, for loops
• Result and side effect for preincrement, postincrement, predecrement, postdecrement
• Division of integers in C++
• Order of operations in && and ||
• ? : operator
• Boolean expressions, evaluation, writing, conversion of bool values to/from integer values
• Expressions involving the following operators, and the order of evaluation of them:
  ++, --, +, -, *, /, %, <<, >>, =, and assignment operators
• Conditions involving <, <=, >, >=, ==, !=
• Understand expression evaluation including those with mixed types and the following items
  • evaluating, order of evaluation
  • automatic/implicit conversions, when do they happen, what happens
  • casting/explicit conversion
  • using casting/explicit conversion to force implicit conversion
• Show the steps in the evaluation of an expression as in the on-line examples
• Assignment operators +=, -=, *=, /=, etc., writing, executing, rewriting as assignment with operation
• Common errors we have discussed in class
• Declaring string variables
• Using string variables
• Writing a simple function, including the declaration, definition, and a call (i.e. an invocation) of the function.
• Examples of call-by-value function parameters.
• Examples of call-by-reference function parameter.
• Examples of pass-by-value parameter passing.
• Examples of pass-by-reference parameter passing.
• Writing functions that return value through there return type
• Writing functions that can change values in the calling domain through pass by value reference