CPTR 124 Fundamentals of Programming Final Exam Study Guide

The material presented in this guide covers the concepts emphasized on the final exam. It is meant to guide students studying and reviewing for the test; it is not guaranteed to be comprehensive. Actual test questions will differ from the examples given here. Students should use this guide in addition to other study activities (like reading the textbook, reviewing completed lab assignments, old quizzes, etc.) Some material here may be updated, so check periodically for changes.

The exam will emphasize Chapters 7–13, as numbered in the November 16, 2015 draft of the textbook.

Be sure you understand the following concepts:

• Functions: defining, invoking, passing parameters, formal vs. actual parameters, default parameters, local vs. global variables, recursion, docstrings, functions as parameters
• Lists: creating, accessing, traversing, slicing, sorting, searching
• Other Python data structures: tuples, dictionaries, sets
• Objects: creating, using, mutable vs. immutable objects
• Exceptions: handling exceptions
• Custom types: classes, methods, __init__, self parameter

You need not worry about the following concepts for the test:

• Local functions, lambda expressions
• The intricate details of Python's exception handling infrastructure
• Linear vs. binary search
• Class inheritance

The programming part of the test will be given during lab time. It consists of several functions that you must write. The following is an example:

Write a Python function named sum used to compute the sum of all the values in a list of integers. You function may not call any other functions. For example, the following code fragment

displays 9, since 3 + 1 + 5 = 9.

Beware! Any problems that states that "the function should do no I/O" means you should not get input from the user nor should you print anything on the screen. This means you must not use the print and input functions within the function.