Winter 2026, CSCI 512, Test 3 Review

Quick review: Chapters 7 to 12 in your text.

Topic review:

• Chapter 7 - Type Systems
• Basic idea of a type
• Hardware based types
• Strongly typed languages
• Weakly typed languages
• Polymorphism in type systems
• Orthogonality -- how can types be mixed
• Initialization, aggregates
• Standard types -- characters, integers, floating, boolean
• Other "built-in" types -- strings, complex, rational, ...
• Enumeration types
• Refinement types
• Variable size integer types
• Chapter 8 - Composite Types
• Records/Structs
• Variant Records/Unions
• Arrays, multi-dimensional arrays, operations
• Allocation, dope vectors, indexing
• Row Major vs Column Major, index formulas
• Sets
• Pointers and Recursive Types, including Lists
• Dynamic Memory flavors, explicit allocation, garbage collection
• Statically typed vs Dynamic typed
• Type equivalence in statically typed, structural, name, declaration
• Issues in strong type systems, aliases, ...
• Opaque types
• Type checking in the compiler
• Type casting
• Universal type
• Overloading, generic systems, types a parameters
• Generic types, template types, ...
• l-value vs r-value expressions
• Chapter 9 - Subroutines and Control Abstraction
• Subroutines -- generic name of procedures, functions, methods, ...
• Typical stack layout of subroutines
• Caller -- call sequence: arguments, hidden args, static link, ...
• Callee: Prologue -- creates activation record
• Callee: Epilogue -- cleans up and returns with necessary information
• Optimizations: leaf routines may not need full activation record
• Display Vs Static chains
• Parameter passing
• Various syntaxes
• Call by value
• Call by reference
• Call by sharing
• Call by value, result
• Call by name (Algol 60)
• Various languages: Pascal by value unless specified
• C is always by value
• Ada: in, out, in out
• Aliases in C++
• Returning a reference (C++ and others)
• Idea of a Delegate (Objective-C, Swift, C#)
• Default parameters -- evaluation environment or just constants
• Function return values, syntaxes
• Errors in subroutines, gotos
• Exceptions: try/catch/throw/raise/...
• Languages without exceptions: C-setjmp/longjmp, Ruby--continuation
• Coroutines -- basic concepts
• Event based programming
• Chapter 10 - Object Orientation
• History of objects -- records/structs and subprograms together
• Modules -- separate compilation, some visibility control
• Encapsulation, inheritance, dynamic method binding -- first in Simula
• Smalltalk first totally object oriented language
• Object concept ... data and methods
• Classes -- implementation of object concept
• Visibility: public, private, protected for data and methods
• Constructors / Destructors
• Inheritance: public, private, protected
• Method overriding
• Generic Classes/Objects
• Hidden parameter to methods: self/this/...
• Static methods and fields
• Multiple constructors
• Copy constructor: shallow copy vs deep copy
• Dynamic Method binding, with method overriding
• Multiple inheritance
• Core ideas: encapsulation and visibility, inheritance, dynamic method binding
• Chapter 11 - Functional Languages
• Theory to Programming languages
• Turing to imperative languages
• Church to functional languages
• Church: lambda calculus
• Functional programming (pure) -- functions with no side effects, no mutable state
• Necessary features: 1st class and higher-order functions, polymorphism, ...
• Recursion is primary method of repetition
• Tail Recursion can be done iteratively
• Higher order functions: function as argument or a return value
• Some functional languages included mutable state and side effects
• Use of lists in functional languages
• A bit of Scheme
• A bit of OCaml
• Scheme is basically Cambridge Polish
• OCaml is infix
• Applicative order vs Normal order
• Implementation of higher order functions
• Chapter 12 - Logic Languages
• Basics of logic programming
• predicates
• Operators: conjunction, disjunction, negation, implication
• "Statements": axioms, theorems, hypotheses
• Horn clauses
• Atoms / Numbers
• Fact clause
• Query clause
• Rule clause
• A bit of Prolog
• atoms and facts: rainy(seattle). parent(mary,fred). ...
• Prolog rules: e.g. name(args) :- clauses.
• Variables start with upper case, atoms start with lower case
• Facts appear to have to be in a file, [filename]. to read them
• Left to right evaluation of terms in the clauses
• Basic idea of evaluating a term, may include backtracking
• = vs is in prolog