Examinable material

All material covered in lectures and workshops is examinable. There may also be questions which are related to the projects - we assume that all students who sit the exams have completed the projects and not forgotten them. We also assume that all students have a background understanding of basic algorithms and data structures and C programming.

The style of questions

The sample exams are a good guide to the style of questions. The mid-semester test is also indicative of some kinds of questions. There may be questions of the following styles:

• Short answer questions on what is computed by small expressions or calls. This may involve common library functions/predicates and/or simple code which you must understand in order to answer the question.
• Coding questions in Haskell and/or Mercury. You will not be required to write much Mercury code.
• More design-oriented questions, such as devising types to represent various things.
• Coding style questions, such as what advantage one coding style has over another.
• Questions about programming language features, for example comparing and contrasting various features of C, Haskell and Mercury, or describing some feature of Haskell or Mercury and/or what the feature is useful for.

Sample answers to exam questions

We will not be supplying sample answers to any of the exams.

Questions and answers

I am concerned about failing the project hurdle - is it worth sitting the exam?

We advise sitting the exam. Borderline fails of the subject overall or of the hurdles are always considered carefully. If you demonstrate reasonable programming ability on the exam, there is a greater chance that failure of the project hurdle will be ignored.

Further information

Please ask any further questions on the LMS discussion forum.