CS 3040 Final Exam Review
Fall, 2022

Review Questions

• Be sure to review the reviews for Exam 1 and Exam 2
• Note 10 on ANTLR: know the elements of an ANTLR specification, be able to predict the result of an ANTLR spec on a file, be able to add short actions to ANTLR productions.
• Note 11 on Semantics:
  • Explain ad-hoc vs. operational semantics, be able to distinguish between the two and explain the advantages of each
  • Be able to explain/interpret inference rules (including axioms) and proof trees.
• Note 12 on Types:
  • Be able to discuss various types of types: primitive types, ordinal types
  • Be able to compute the address of an element in a two-dimensional C array.
  • Explain union types and distinguish between Haskel and C union types. Know the uses and issues of both.
• Note 13 on scope and lifetime: define both terms, discuss dynamic vs. static scoping, explain why dynamic scoping isn't needed in an OO language.
• Note 14 on Memory Management:
  • Be able to discuss dangling pointers and memory leaks, especially how to create both. Also, be able to explain why pointers are useful even though they have these other problems.
  • Reference counting and issues.
  • Mark-and-sweep collection, its issues, and how some of those issues are fixed using generational collection.
• Note 15 on Compilation:
  • Be able to list the different phases of a compiler (as presented in the notes) and to give a high-level view of what each phase does.
• Note 17 on Overview:
  • Different ways to classify programming languages, the advantages and disadvantages of each (including keywords involved in each).

Like the midterms, expect a mix of MC (including other select-the-box question types), fill-in-the-blank, and short essay.

On essay questions (which usually expect you to write 2-4 sentences), I do not grade for grammar, but when answers are too vague and have a lot of grammatical mistakes then it can be very difficult for me to determine what you were saying. It can be a good idea to write complete sentences to keep that from happening. It is also good to use key terminology from the class such as "verification" and "quality assurance". A common mistake is to just repeat the words of the question in your answer; that's fine, but be sure you provide additional information to show me what you have learned.