CS360 -- Lab 0 -- Pointers and Bit Arithmetic

Video help: I've made a video of doing the test below (test.html), which should help you if you find this material confusing or difficult: https://youtu.be/zENlm38OWbI.
Lab zero is really a quiz, which will be conducted during lab. Please see the class web site for the date. The questions for the quiz will be exactly like the questions in this lab. Therefore, use this as practice for the quiz.

For each of your practice sessions, log into a lab machine. There is the following program in the lab directory, which you call as follows: 

/home/jplank/cs360/labs/Lab-0-Pointers/pointer-tester key action

The key may be any string -- the string is used to generate a random test. If you use the action "Q", then it will print a test, in HTML, on standard output. Let's go ahead and generate a test with the key "binky": 

UNIX> /home/jplank/cs360/labs/Lab-0-Pointers/pointer-tester binky Q > test.html
You can see the test here: test.html. The first line of the test tells you what its key is. For example, the first line of test.html is "Lab Zero. HTML file for key binky:".

The test is composed of 25 questions. Each time you generate a test, it will be similar in format, but the questions will be different. The content depends on the key given.

When you answer the questions, create a text file with the answers. The first line of an answer file should be the key. After that, each answer should go on its own line, and each line should be of the form: 

number answer

The number is the question number, and the answer is your answer. Take a look at the file answers.txt: 

binky
0 0x12345678
1 12345678
12 0x91

As you can see, I have put the key "binky" as the first line. After that, I have answered questions 0, 1 and 12. I can tell you that the answer to questions 0 and 1 are incorrect. Question 1's answer is in the wrong format, too (it doesn't match the printf() statement in the question). The answer to question 12 is correct.

You can test your answers for correctness, by calling /home/jplank/cs360/labs/Lab-0-Pointers/pointer-tester with the same key that created the HTML file, but with a "T" (for "test") instead of a "Q" (for "questions"). Redirect standard input to come from your answer file. The program will report your answers and whether or not they are correct.

Here's our example: 

UNIX> /home/jplank/cs360/labs/Lab-0-Pointers/pointer-tester binky T < answers.txt
Question  0: Your answer: 0x12345678 -- Incorrect: +0
Question  1: Your answer:   12345678 -- Wrong number of characters.  Check your formatting.
Question  2: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question  3: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question  4: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question  5: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question  6: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question  7: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question  8: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question  9: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 10: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 11: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 12: Your answer:       0x91 -- Correct: +4
Question 13: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 14: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 15: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 16: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 17: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 18: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 19: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 20: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 21: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 22: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 23: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0
Question 24: Your answer:            -- Incorrect: +0

Your score: 4 / 100
UNIX>
If you want to see the answers, run the program with the action "A": 
UNIX> /home/jplank/cs360/labs/Lab-0-Pointers/pointer-tester binky A

Correct Answers:

 0 : 0x496f7976
 1 : 0x737a6a6c
 2 :       0x6e
 3 :       0x73
 4 :       0x11
 5 :       0x78
 6 : 0x58ac1144
 7 : 0x58ac114c
 8 : 0x58ac1141
 9 : 0x58ac1151
10 :     zsPdZm
11 :     xGDmjR
12 :       0x91
13 :       0xb5
14 :       0x4c
15 :       0xbf
16 :       0xa8
17 :       0x09
18 : 0x0008b0dc
19 : 0x5c6bf000
20 : 0xf8aff64f
21 : 0xa00df00d
22 : 0x08a00640
23 : 0x58a20642
24 : 0x50784555
UNIX>
Remember -- when you use '%x', all of the digits are lower case.
A word of advice -- you will find the endian.c program in the "C Stuff 2" lecture notes (http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~jplank/plank/classes/cs360/360/notes/CStuff-2/lecture.html) to be very helpful in doing this lab. You should read over that program and its accompanying writeup before doing this lab.

The Quiz

As I said above, you'll be quizzed on this in a timed quiz during lab. The web site / Canvas site will tell you when that is. The quiz itself will be in the exact same format -- question numbers will be different, but the format of the questions will be the same. If you're not rock solid on this material, use this lab as study material and practice, practice, practice.