Previous review (for Mid-term): Mid-term Review.

Main Additional Topics Since the Mid-term, Based on Recitations:

• The Lisp Language (2 recitations):
  • Lisp Rec 1: Basics and Functions.
  • Lisp Rec 2: Functions and mapcar

  • What you should know:
    • Lisp S-expressions (definition).
    • Lisp notation for use of functions (prefix, fully parenthesized), that is, (+ (* 2 3) (/ 8 4)).
    • Functions to work with Lisp lists: car, and cdr to take lists apart and cons to create lists or put lists together. Also append and list.
    • Basic (recursive) Lisp evaluation.: Given a list to evaluate, separate off the car, which should be a Lisp function. Then recursively evaluate each of the following items in the list (those at the top level). Finally evaluate function with those evaluated items as its actual parameters.
    • True (t) and false (nil in Lisp, and predicates: functions that return t or nil.
    • Lisp's version of if-the-else: cond and its syntax -- not evalutated the same way as an ordinary Lisp S-expression. (The successive predicates in the cond are evaluated in order until one is found that returns t.)
    • The syntax for Lisp function definition -- not evaluated like an ordinary Lisp S-expression, but absorbed to provide a new user-defined function.
    • Understanding Lisp functions and writing simple recursive Lisp functions.
    • Simple uses of mapcar and apply.
    • The internal representation of S-expressions in Lisp, using Lisp cells: Which are just a pair of pointers, the first to the car and the second to the cdr, except for atoms. In case the cdr pointer is neither null nor a list, one gets a dotted pair.

• The Postscript Language:
  • Postscript Rec 1: Basics.
  • Postscript Rec 2: Business Card.

  • What you should know:
    • The "basics" as listed under items 1 through 11 under "Basic Topics (from the Blue Book)" in the writeup for the first Postscript recitation here. (There is a lot of material here -- you only need a rough understanding of all of it.)
    • Specifics about the "Overlapping boxes" examples in the above web page.
    • Specifics from the "Practice with translate, rotate, and scale" examples in the above web page.
    • Other material from more complex examples and from your business card.

• The Prolog Language:
  • Prolog Recitation.

  • What you should know:
    • Specifics about Prolog facts, rules, and queries as illustrated in the example: Prolog knowledgebase example.
    • Simple uses of Prolog in database management type examples, as shown on the Prolog recitation: here.

• structs in C (with discussions of C++ and Java):
  • Practice with structs in C.

  • What you should know:
    • How a struct in C or a class in C++ is fundamentally different from an array in C/C++/Java or from a class in Java, since the name in these latter cases always is a reference or pointer to the object, whereas the name of a struct in C or a class in C++ gives the object itself. If one wants a pointer here, one must explicitly declare the pointer.
    • An assignment operator between two structs or classes in C or C++ copies the contents of the struct or class.
    • If one returns a struct or class in C or C++ from a function, a copy is returned. Because of this, one usually returns a pointer to a struct or class in C or C++ (which is the only possibility in Java: to return a reference to a class).

• Generic constructs in C, C++, and Java:
  • Generic Constructs.

  • What you should know:
    • How C++ uses the template feature to achieve genericity (just the basic ideas and implications, without details of the syntax of templates).
    • How Java can handle an arbitrary Object including code to print an object without knowing until run time just what the object is (accomplished by including a toString method in the class implementing the object, if one is not already provided.
    • How Java can use the Comparable type, which is defined by any class that "implements Comparable" by providing a compareTo method. The examples showed how to handle any type with a compareTo method, including String, the "wrapped" classes Integer and Double (which already have compareTo defined), and any user-defined class with a compareTo method (illustrated with the Rational type in the example in the recitation).