CS246 review notes and code samples

About

This repo was created to collect and share important c++ and bash code snippets from the cs246 course offered at the University of Waterloo 🎓. Feel free to contribute anything else!

Study Topics

Unit 1: Bash

• basic commands: echo, cat, ls, using variables, etc.
• stream redirection
• globbing patterns: *
• regular expressions with grep
• Subshells (memorize when to use quotes)
• Permissions
• Scripting syntax (variables, conditionals, loops, functions)
• Testing - human, machine (white, black), performance, regression

Unit 2: Intro to C++

• hello world
• using command line arguments and exit codes
• I/O with cin, cout, cerr, using getline
• file streams and string streams
• C vs C++ strings and C++ string operations
• Default function parameters
• Function overloading
• References (and rvalues vs lvalues)
• Pass-by-values vs. pass-by-reference vs. pass-by-const-reference
• Dynamic memory
• Operator overloading
• Valgrind
• Makefile

Unit 3: C++ / Intro to OOP

• Preprocessor directives (variables, conditions, defining variables when compiling)
• Separate compilation and include guards
• Basics of classes (objects, this pointer, methods)
• Constructor basics (why we use them, compiler provided methods)
• object creation steps, the MIL, implicit conversion (explicit keyword)
• Copy constructors and copy assignment operator
• Shallow vs. deep copy
• self-assignment issues
• copy & swap idiom
• Destructors and object destruction steps
• Move constructor and move assignment operator (differences between move and copy)
• Big 5 (why they're a package, writing them with separation compilation, copy vs move)
• Copy/move elision
• Visibility (public vs private), class keyword vs struct keyword, and encapsulation
• Design patterns (Intro)
• Iterators (why we need them, auto type, range based loops)

Unit 4: Inheritance, Design Patterns, casting etc

• Inheritance
• 3 Access Levels and why each one is used/important
• Dynamic Dispatch/Polymorphism
• Virtual Methods vs Pure Virtual Methods
• Abstract classes
• Concrete classes
• Partial assignment/Mixed Assignment/Polymorphic Assignmnent
• UML
  • Fields
  • Public/Protected Methods (ideally NOT getters/setters)
  • Has-A
  • Owns-A
• Design Patterns
  • Observer Pattern
  • Decorator Pattern
  • Factory Method Pattern
  • Template Method Pattern
  • Visitor Pattern
  • Bridge Pattern
  • Iterator Pattern
• Idioms
  • RAII
  • NVI
  • pImpl
  • copy and swap
• Compilation dependencies
• Templates (nothing to do with design pattern of same name!!)
• Template keyword
• Standard Template Library
  • Vector (dynamic length array)
  • Vector Iterator/Reverse_iterator
  • Common vector functions
  • Map (unordered dictionary)
  • Common map functions
  • Iterate through map
• Casting
  • Static_cast
  • Dynamic_cast
  • Reinterpret_cast
  • Const_cast
• lambda functions
• exception safety, throw, catch
• vtables and virtual inheritance

Key words to know

• public
• protected
• private
• friend
• noexcept
• final
• explicit
• extern
• auto
• typename
• template
• typedef

Installation

1. Head over to any directory on your computer and clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/dillionverma/cs246-exam-review.git
   

2. For any c++ code you wish to compile, cd into folder and run the following:

   cd cs246-exam-review/big5   # big5 directory for example
   make
   ./main
   

3. For any bash script you wish to execute, cd into folder and run the following:

   chmod u+x file_name     # give executable permissions on file for current user
   ./file_name
   

Credits

A big thank you to my Professor Brad Lushman for dedicating his time to teaching this amazing course and also for slipping funny jokes while teaching to make lectures more enjoyable.