Topics for Final Exam

The final exam is optional. I will count the higher of the grades from the midterm and final exams. Even if you got an excellent score on the midterm exam, I would recommend that you take the final as practice for the core exam.

The final exam will cover most of the same topics as the midterm. Here are a list of additional topics that I will expect you to be familiar with for the final:

• Type inferencing vs. type checking
• Referential transparency
• First-class functions (why activation records won't work)
• Pattern matching and data constructors
• Lazy vs. Eager evaluation
• Classes
• Inheritance
• Static vs. Dynamic binding

Here are the list of topics from the midterm:

• BNF/EBNF
  • given a grammar in (E)BNF, describe the language it defines
  • given a grammar in (E)BNF decide whether certain words are in the set defined by the grammar
  • convert an EBNF grammar to BNF
  • given a description for a simple language construct, write an EBNF description for it
• Structure of a Programming Language
  • Syntax
  • Static Semantics
  • Dynamic Semantics
• Dynamic vs. Static Properties of a Programming Language Definition
• Interpreted vs. Compiled Programming Languages
• Type coercion
• Operator precedence
• Associativity (right vs. left)
• Data structures
• Reading Simple Perl programs
• Scoping
  • binding/bound/free occurences
  • scope of a declaration
  • visibility of a declaration
  • lifetime of a declaration
  • dangling references
• Parameter passing methods
  • call-by-value
  • call-by-reference
  • call-by-value-result
  • macro expansion
• Lexical vs. Dynamic Scoping
• Memory management: heap/stack
• Activation Records
  • In a given program, what activation records will be on the stack
  • The basic elements of an activation record