CS350 Exam 1 Guide

  1. What programming language has dominated (Scientific | Business | AI) over the last 40 years?
  2. What is an example of the lack or orthogonality in C?
  3. Why is type checking of parameters in subprograms important?
  4. What is aliasing?
  5. Briefly describe the major language categories and some of the attributes of each?
  6. Briefly describe the difference among interpreted, compiled and hybrid languages?
  7. What are some attributes of OO languages?
  8. Describe the ALGOL usage.
  9. Briefly describe the PL/I language.
  10. Define syntax and semantics.
  11. What is LL(1)?
  12. Describe the difference between BNF and EBNF.
  13. Write an ENBF description for C float literals.
  14. Show the parse tree for A = A * (B + (C * A)). Use the precedence rules for C.
  15. Show the following language ... is ambiguous.
  16. Consider the following grammar ..., which of the following sentences ... can be generated by the grammar?
  17. Draw a state diagram that recognizes C comments like /* stuff */.
  18. Describe the difference between keywords and reserve words.
  19. Define lexeme and token.
  20. What are the goals of syntax analysis?
  21. Describe the approach used by a recursive descent parser.
  22. Define binding and binding time.
  23. Define static binding and dynamic binding.
  24. With respect to names, define coercion, strong and weak typing.
  25. With respect to names define lifetime, scope, static scope and dynamic scope.
  26. What is a block?
  27. What are the advantages of named constants?
  28. What is an associative array?
  29. Discuss ways to implement character strings in a language?
  30. What are records?
  31. What is a union?
  32. Define row major order and column major order with respect to arrays.
  33. Discuss the use of reference types and pointers in C.
  34. Discuss static, stack-dynamic and dynamic arrays.
  35. Define operator precedence and operator associativity.
  36. What is a side effect?
  37. Define narrowing and widening conversions.
  38. What is a mixed mode expression?
  39. What is short-circuit evaluation?