Course Description
This course provides an introduction to software tools and systems level programming. Topics include: understanding how programs run (compilation, linking, and loading), an introduction to a complex operating system (UNIX), scripting languages, and the C programming language. As time permits, other topics will be chosen from: system calls, memory management, libraries, multi-component program organization and builds, version control, debuggers and profilers.

Prerequisite: Computer Science 027a/b or 037a/b with a grade of at least 60%

Antirequisites: Software Engineering 250a/b and the former Software Engineering 201a/b

Lecture Hours: Tuesdays from 10:30am to 12:30pm, and Thursdays from 10:30am to 11:30am in Middlesex College 6

Instructor: Marc MORENO MAZA
Office: Middlesex College 383
Office Hours: Thursdays 1:00-3:00pm
Email: moreno <at> csd.uwo.ca
Phone: 661-2111 x 86891

Required Texts

• Sobell, UNIX System V: A Practical Guide. Benjamin-Cummings: 3rd edition.
• King, C Programming: A Modern Approach. Norton.

• UNIX Fundamentals: UNIX vs. Windows; logging on; files and directories; pathnames, and directory and file structure; editors; shells; I/O redirection; UNIX concurrency (processes); utilities; file permissions and security; regular expressions; shell programming.
• C programming: compiling, linking and loading; data types and operators; control structures; formatted I/O; file I/O; connections between I/O and the underlying operating system; function calls; structs; enumerations; arrays; pointers (pointer arithmetics, pointers and arrays, arrays of pointers, pointers to functions); memory management; linked lists and other dynamically allocated data structures; strings; calling C from UNIX; general libraries; standard libraries and headers; the C preprocessor; C program organization.
• UNIX Tools: building and managing multi-component programs; the make utility; version control and configuration management; debuggers; code performance and profiling.

Lecture Notes
Course lecture notes will be made available in PowerPoint and PDF on the course website. They are provided as a courtesy by the course instructor. Possessing (and even reading) these notes is not a suitable substitute for attending lectures.

Course Website
The CS211b website is at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/CS211b. Lecture notes, assignments, and class information will be posted on this website. You are responsible for reading this information on a frequent and regular basis.

TA Consulting Schedule: to be arranged

Computing Facilities

Each student will be given an account on the Computer Science Department senior undergraduate computing facility, GAUL. In accepting the GAUL account, a student agrees to abide by the department's Rules of Ethical Conduct.

Note: After-hours access to certain Computer Science lab rooms is by student card. If a student card is lost, a replacement card will no longer open these lab rooms, and the student must bring the new card to a member of the Systems Group in Middlesex College Room 346, or to the I/O counter (MC 352).

Email Contact

We will occasionally need to send email messages to the whole class, or to students individually. Email will be sent to your UWO email address. You must make sure that you read your email on a frequent and regular basis, or have it forwarded to an alternative email address if you prefer to read it there.

Note that UWO and most other email providers establish quotas or limits on the amount of space available to you. If you let your email accumulate, your mailbox may fill up and you may lose important email from your instructors. Losing email is not an acceptable excuse for not knowing about the information that was sent.

Student Evaluation

Grades will be based on five assignments worth a total of 40%, a midterm exam worth 20%, and a final exam worth 40%.

If for any reason the assignment schedule given below cannot be adhered to, the assignment marks will be prorated. (The assignments are worth 40% of the overall mark for the course. If an assignment has to be canceled for any reason, the remaining assignment weights will be prorated (scaled) to add up to 40%.)

To be eligible to receive a passing grade in the course, your mark on the final exam must be at least 40%, and your weighted average on the assignments must be at least 40%. To be eligible to receive a grade of C or higher, your mark on the final exam must be at least 50%, and your weighted average on the assignments must be at least 50%.

Assignment and Test Feedback
Every effort will be made to have assignments marked and handed back within 2 weeks of the hand-in date. Midterm exam marks will be posted within 2 weeks of the exam. If we are unable to comply with our intended return dates, revised dates will be posted on the course website.

Test and Exams

Midterm: 1 hr 40 mins, Tuesday March 6th, during class time (location to be announced)
Final: 3 hours during the April exam period; exact time to be announced

There will be no makeup midterm exam. Students who do not write the midterm will have the weight shifted to the final exam, which will then be worth 60 %. Students who do better on the final than the midterm will also have the midterm weight shifted to the final.

Assignments

Due Dates (revised)

Asn 1 - 1% (light) - due between Jan 7 and 18
Asn 2 - 7% (medium) - assigned Jan 24, due Feb 7
Asn 3 - 7%(medium) - assigned Feb 7, due Feb 21
Asn 4 - 7%(medium) - assigned Feb 21, due Mar 13
Asn 5 - 18% (heavy) - assigned Mar 13, due Apr 3
About the Assignments

• Assignment descriptions will be posted on the course website by the dates listed above.
• Any changes, updates, and clarifications to assignments will also be posted on the website. It is your responsibility to monitor these pages closely.
• Assignments may involve programming in C, the use of UNIX operating system utilities, programming using shell scripts, and concept questions (non-programming) related to the lecture material.
• To be eligible for full marks, individual C assignments must run under UNIX on the departmental computing equipment. You may develop assignments on your home computer, but you must allow for the amount of time it will take to get the final product working on Computer Science's machines.

• Your assignment solutions are expected to be your own individual work, not the products of group effort. On occasion, you may be allowed to make use of code from an outside source, such as your textbook. Check with your instructor if you are uncertain about the places in which you can use code written by another person.

• With each assignment, you are required to hand in an Assignment Submission Form, on which you certify that the material you've handed in is exclusively your own work. This form must be submitted to the assignment locker in a 9-by-12-inch envelope, bearing your name, which will be used to return your assignment. The precise location of the assignment lockers will be announced on the course website.

• Programming assignments will be submitted electronically. Details will be given on the course website and/or in the assignment descriptions. We reserve the right to use similarity detection software to detect possible cheating cases.

• Some non-programming portions of assignments may have to be handed in on paper. These items must be included in your submission to the assignment locker.

• Assignments are due by 11:59 pm on the due date. In the case of programming assignments, the time stamp on the electronic submission will be used to determine any late penalty. For assignments requiring paper submissions, the times at which they are removed from the assignment locker will be used.

• Late assignments will be accepted for up to four days after the due date, with weekends (Saturday and Sunday) counting as a single day; the late penalty is 5% of the available marks per day. Lateness is based on the times the assignment is removed from the locker and/or received electronically, not on the time it was printed or last modified.
• Late Coupons
  • Each student is given 5 late coupons. These are virtual (as opposed to physical) coupons maintained by the instructor. Late coupons may be applied toward any of assignments 2 through 5.
  • Each coupon can be thought of as a potential one-day assignment extension. It's entirely up to you to decide when to use your coupons; more than one coupon may be used per assignment. If you wish to use any coupons with an assignment, simply note that fact on your Assignment Submission Form.
  • The intent of late coupons is to give you some free days in case of minor illness, work overload, etc. No other extensions will be given in such cases.
  • Coupons are not transferable to another student.
  • Once a coupon has been used, you cannot ``take it back'' to use for another assignment instead.
  • Unused coupons are not redeemable for extra marks.
  • Using a late coupon does not change the final date on which an assignment will be accepted. Whether or not coupons are used, the assignment must be handed in within 4 days of the original due date.

• Extensions will be granted only on serious medical or compassionate grounds. You should take supporting documentation to the office of the Dean of your faculty, who will contact the instructor.

• Assignments are marked by the Teaching Assistant(s), who follow marking schemes provided by instructors.
• When assignment marking has been completed, you will be informed via the course website and/or email.
• You will be able to pick up your graded assignments in the first class following the announcement of their availability. Thereafter, they will be placed at the I/O counter on the third floor of Middlesex College. You must present your student card when retrieving assignments from the I/O counter.
• A request for adjustment in an assignment mark must be made within 2 weeks of the date on which it was first available for pickup. (Beyond that date, regrading will not be considered, regardless of whether you retrieved your assignment.) Such a request must be submitted in writing, and must include specific reasons why you believe you deserve more marks. The request must be accompanied by all materials that were originally handed in, as well as the original marker's grade summary sheet. Regrading requests must be handed in to the lecturer.
• Assignment marks may be mailed out periodically throughout the term. It is your responsibility to check that your marks have been recorded correctly.

Tutoring

The role of tutoring is to help students understand course material. Tutors should not write assignments or tests for the students who hire them. Submitting an assignment that contains material written by a tutor is an academic offense. Having employed the same tutor as another student is not a legitimate defense against an accusation of collusion, should two students hand in assignments judged similar beyond the possibility of coincidence.

Ethical Conduct
All assignments are individual assignments. You may discuss approaches to problems among yourselves; however, the actual details of the work (assignment coding, answers to concept questions, etc.) must be your individual effort. Assignments that are judged to be the result of academic dishonesty will, for the student's first offense, be given a mark of zero with an additional penalty equal to the weight of the assignment also being applied. You are responsible for reading and respecting the Computer Science Department's policy on Scholastic Offenses and Rules of Ethical Conduct.