Course Information

Course Description:

This course introduces programming and software development techniques in a procedure language. In particular, the C programming language and the UNIX operating system will be used to teach program design paradigms, source code management, software testing, debugging, scripting and other techniques useful for software development. 

More details of the goals and topics of this course can be found in the Faculty of Computer Science Curriculum.

Topic List (Tentative)

• Introduction to UNIX
• UNIX files
• Pipes, regular expressions and filters
• Shells and processes
• Introduction to C
• Operators, expressions and statements
• Software development life cycle
• Software testing and debugging
• Basic types
• Arrays
• Functions
• Pointers
• Strings
  Program organization
• Source code management
• Dynamic storage allocation
• File manipulation
• UNIX shell scripting

Course Prerequisites:

CSCI 1101.

Textbook:

There are two required textbooks:

• K. N. King, C Programming: A Modern Approach, 2nd Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.

• Graham Glass and King Ables, UNIX for Programmers and Users, 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall, 2003.
  

The above textbooks are currently available in the Dalhousie University bookstore.

Reference:

• Emacs tutorial: http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/tcl-course/emacs-tutorial.html
• UNIX in a Nutshell: This books covers a lot of materials for UNIX, though it is intended to be more suitable for a UNIX reference book, rather than a UNIX textbook. Our university's license allows six persons to read this book simultaneously.
• A brief tutorial for gdb: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/03/debug-c-program-using-gdb/
• An Introduction To Using GDB Under Emacs
• Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide

More references may be added during the term.

Grading:

• 7 assignments (A): best 6 out of 7 assignments will be used; each has equal weight;
• Midterm I (M1);
• Midterm II (M2);
• Final Exam (F).

Final Grade = A * 30% + max(M1*10%+M2*10%+F*50%, F*70%)

In other words, the best 6 out of 7 assignments are counted as 30% of your final grade, and if your final exam score is higher than the average of the two midterm exam scores, your final exam score will be used in place of both midterm exam scores in the calculation.

The Faculty of Computer Science requires students to get at least C- in CSCI 2132 (60% for this course) in order to take other courses having this course as prerequisites. You should aim for much higher than C-, as otherwise, you will find it hard to do well in or even pass other computer science courses that require much programming.

Help Desk and Learning Centre:

The Help Desk of Faculty of Computer Science is available to help with technical problems. They are located on the first floor of Computer Science Building.

The Learning Centre of Faculty of Computer Science, located at room 233 of the Computer Science Building is staffed with teaching assistants who are senior undergraduate or graduate students who are available to help you with your course work. Please note that the instructor of this course does not supervise the teaching assistants in the learning centre, and thus clarification questions should be directed to the instructor.

Academic Integrity:

All work in CSCI 2132 must be done individually. Discussions on the general aspects of the assignments with your classmates are allowed, but each student must hand in his/her own solution.

Cheating on exams or assignments is a serious academic offense. Cheating not only includes copying another student's work or letting other students copy your work, but also includes excessive collaboration. You can find more details on Dalhousie University's Academic Integrity web site.

Additional Information:

• A Two-Page Course Information Sheet (handed out in the first lecture)

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