News archive

Exemptions from final exam
Anyone who has earned all 900 possible points so far can afford to get zero points on the final and would still get an A (not an A-) in the course. Such people can therefore afford not to show up for the final.
Extending this exemption a bit further, we will assume that anyone who has earned 875 or more points so far would easily get 25 points or more on the final and hence get an A for the course. Such people can therefore also afford not to take the final and still get an A.
Posted: Wednesday, April 30, 2003.

A sample final exam is posted. Also solutions.
Posted: Friday, April 25, 2003.

Sample solution for Assignment 5
For the lab exam this week you may start from your solution for Assignment 5 or from the sample solution.
The sample solution is in the CSEL at
```
~karl/Graphs
```
It is also posted on a web page.
Posted: Monday, April 21, 2003.

Drawing nodes and edges in Assignment 5
If this poses a problem feel free to use the drawing functions from the posted sample solution of Assignment 4. Look at the bottom of Polynomial.cxx.
Posted: Thursday, April 17, 2003

A sample lab exam 2 is posted.
Posted: Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Sample solution for Assignment 4
For the lab exam this week you may start from your solution for Assignment 4 or from the sample solution.
The sample solution is in the CSEL at
```
~karl/Polynomials
```
It is also posted on a web page.
Posted: Monday, April 7, 2003.

Lab problems / Assignment 4 postponed to Monday
There were problems with disk space in the lab on Friday, which kept people from submitting Assignment 4. I am told these disk problems are now fixed.
Because of those problems the due date for Assignment 4 is postponed once more. The new due date is Monday, April 7, 11PM.
Posted: Saturday, April 5, 2003.

Snow closure / Assignment 4 due date postponed
The due date for Assignment 4 is postponed because of the closure of the campus. The new due date is Friday after Spring Break (April 4), 11PM.
As planned, we will have a sample lab exam in the first week after Spring Break, and a real lab exam the week after that, asking you to implement extensions to Assignment 4.
Posted: Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Campus closure
The campus is closed starting at 4pm today (Tuesday, March 18). Today's recitation starting at 3:30 is therefore cancelled.
If the campus closure extends through tomorrow I'll post new assignment deadlines here.
Posted: Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Postponements
Lab Exam 1 is moved to the week of April 7 - 11 (that's the second week after Spring Break) so that we can have a practice exam the week before.
Assignment 4 is postponed by one day, to Thursday, March 20, 11PM, so that everyone can have the benefit of a recitation session before the due date.
Posted: Friday, March 14, 2003

Assignment 4 code discussed in class
The page of notes about Assignment 4 now contains code samples as discussed in class on Friday (or very similar), plus examples of how to draw and write text to create those tree pictures.
Posted: Friday, March 14, 2003

There is now a bulletin board for the class.
It is a section of Michael Main's bulletin board. Other sections are for other courses.
Posted: February 26, 2003

Trouble with “start new picture” option in Assignment 2
It seems that a new clean window does not always come up even after you do what should work:
```
cout << "startNewDrawing" << endl;
cout << "show" << endl;
```
If this does not work for you, ignore it.
Posted: February 21, 2003

TA lab hours are posted.
Posted: February 19, 2003

Submitting Assignment 1
Go to Dora. Then create an account for yourself and click the button to add CSCI 2270. Once you do that, you can submit Assignment 1. You need to submit all four files: MovingObject.cxx, MovingObject.h, main.cxx and Makefile.
Posted: February 3, 2003

Fix for drawing window not shutting down

There are two lines missing in CDraw.java:

    ...
            tape = new Tape ();
            initializeTape ();
        }

        if (inputLine.equals ("quit"))  // missing line
            System.exit (0);            // missing line

        if (inputLine.equals ("show"))
            repaint ();
    }
    catch (IOException e) 
    {
    ...

If you put those two lines into CDraw.java then you can quit your program like this:

    cout << "quit" << endl; // telling the graphics window to close
    return EXIT_SUCCESS;

Of course the old Ctrl-C also does the trick. I added those lines to the posted CDraw.java.

Posted: Friday, January 31, 2003

Problems with Assignment 1?
I am aware of these issues:
1. The posted skeleton program when compiled and executed in the lab does not do anything, not even bring up a graphics window. This is true but the problem will go away as soon as you change the main program to get some input from the user.
  If you want to see the graphics window now, you can add a line that reads input just before the return from the main program:
```
    ...
    char c; cin >> c;
    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
```
  (I don't know why this is acting this way.)
2. When you use a Makefile without specifying a target it will construct the first target listed, which in the posted file is main. If it suits you better, you can move the run target to the top:
```
 #
 run: main CDraw.class
	 main | java CDraw "CSCI 2270: Assignment 1: MovingObjects" 400 400
 #
 main: main.o MovingObject.o
	 g++ -o main main.o MovingObject.o
 #
           ...
```
  Alternatively, type make run or make -k run.
Let me know when other issues come up.
Posted: Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Due dates: Assignment 1 Feb 7, Assignment 2 Feb 21.
The printed handout of Assignment 2 said Feb 7, incorrectly.
Posted: Monday, January 27, 2003

Mac OS X
Passing along information about how to get to run the skeleton for Assignment 1 under MacOS X:
1. In main.cxx and MovingObject.cxx there needs to be 'using namespace std;' at the top.
2. The prototype for the overloaded operator in MovingObject.h needs to look like this:
```
friend std::ostream& operator << (std::ostream& out, const MovingObject& mo);
```
  and
3. in the implementation of the overloaded operator all of the cout's should be out's.
Thanks, Evan! [I now changed the cout's to out's in the posted version.]
Posted: Tuesday, January 21, 2003

[No news item numbered 3.]

Pitfalls with Makefile-s
Sample programs and skeleton solutions are posted.
Be aware of these two issues with Makefile-s:
1. What may look like a few blank spaces in front of some lines needs to be a TAB character. The pitfall is that depending on how you copy a sample Makefile you may end up with blank spaces. Edit the results of the downloading so that you are sure there is a TAB character.
2. Depending on how you are set up on a Unix system you may need to put a dot and slash in front of the program you are trying to execute, like so: ./main. What this does is tell the system where look for the program you want to execute. The dot means “look in the current directory”. Alternatively you can edit the file .cshrc in your home directory and put a dot in the definition of the PATH variable, making it look something like this : set path=(. /usr/local/bin /usr/ucb /usr/bin /bin).
Posted: Tuesday, January 14, 2003