CMSC 212: Introduction to Low-Level Programming Concepts
NOTE: In order to take this exam, a student must first pass the CMSC132 exam. Passing the 212 exam only places you out of CMSC212. Students taking this exam should have credit for Calculus I, II and Discrete Structures (MATH140, MATH141, and CMSC250).

• All of the CMSC 132 topics above
• Pointers and memory management
• I/O
• Libraries and linking
• Program measurement
• Primitive data representation
• Array representation
• Implementation of object-oriented concepts
• Multi-language support

Summary of Topics from CMSC 212 (as complete as possible, but assume there could be things on the exam that are not on this list)

• Low-Level Programming

  • definition
  • motivation
• Compilation Stages

  preprocessor/translation/linking

  • preprocessor directives
  • type checking
  • connecting .o files

  Java/C comparisons

  • assumes you know what you are doing - allows you to do almost anything
  • small tools
  • memory management
  • type definitions (conversions)
  • executable vs byte code

  Assembly Language and Machine Levels

  • What is a program
  • Format: opcodes, registers, memory addresses

  Memory / Storage

  • stack and heap
  • how they are each managed

    heap - header in the heap space to tell you the size of the chunk allocated

    stack - dedicated registers to track location on stack

    number representations: binary, octal, hex, 2’s complement

    floating point number representation: mantissa, exponent, normalization

    arithmetic in these representations

    arrays - comparisons to other languages: Fortran90, Java and C

  Makefile

  • dependencies and their structure
  • targets/ prerequisites/directives

  Garbage Collection

  • memory leaks
  • concept and challenges of garbage collection

  imitation of Java in C

  reachability graph

  Dynamic Data structures

  • singly linked lists
  • doubly linked lists
  • binary trees
  • binary search trees
  • Hash Tables (simple and chained)
  • Graphs

    general

    undirected and directed graphs

    DAGs (directed acyclical graphs)

  Libraries

  • standard C libraries
  • user defined libraries

    statically linked

    dynamically linked

  Callback functions

  • recursion
  • function pointers

  Multiprocess issues

  Sockets

  UNIX: ps, PID, jobs, kill

  Program Testing

  • White Box
  • Black Box
  • line coverage - lcov

  Program Efficiency

  • Analysis - gprof
  • Optimization: human and compiler driven

    code motion

    loop unrolling

    dead-code elimination

  Interface to code written in other languages

  • concept and considerations

  JNI (Java Native Interface)

  • variable sharing considerations
  • calling C functions from Java
  • calling Java functions from C
  • parameter passing

  UNIX

  • general user commands
  • directory structure
  • environment variables
  • command line arguments

  C language

  • design goals
  • differences from Java
  • functions and parameter passing
  • variable scope and duration rules
  • arrays: using index and using pointers to access

  struct, union and typedef

  • bit fields and bit operations (shift & comparisons)

  types: promotion between types, the C definitions and casting

  operators: type conversions and precedence

  standard I/O library functions

  strings and the standard string library functions

  pipe, fork

  select, socket and file descriptor management

  pointers

  as function parameters

  the use of * and &

  arrays of pointers

  to named variables or to dynamically allocated space

  NULL pointers

  void pointers

  casting pointers

  pointer aliases

  malloc, calloc, alloca and free

  function pointers