| A and AB course | AB course only | Comment |
Properties of Language
|
| Understand short circuit evaluation. | | Boolean expressions such as (a && b) are evaluated left-to-right; expression evaluation stops when the value of the entire expression can be determined. This means that contructs such as
while (k < n && a[k] != key)
can be used safely. |
| Use built-in types: int, char, double, bool. | For compilers that do not use 32 bit integers, long int may be used, otherwise no modifiers short, long, signed, unsigned. |
| Read and use enum. | |
Use operators
+, -, *, /, %;
++, --;
&&, ||, !;
==, <, >, !=, <=, >=;
=, +=, -=, *=, %=, /=; and
insertion extraction for I/O <<, >>. | Use ++ and -- only as shorthand for +=1 and -=1; do NOT use these operators in expressions like a[k++] = 0. |
| Use break. | Used in switch statements, can be used in loops. The continue statement will not be tested. |
| Use function syntax for typecasts, e.g., cout << double(x)/3. | For some types, e.g., long int, another form of cast is necessary: (long int) x. When compilers support the static_cast <> operator it will be used. |
| Use pointers: operators *, ->, new, delete; NULL preferred to 0; use == and != with pointers. | The address of operator & is used to test for aliasing in operator=, but not used elsewhere. Pointer arithmetic, pointers to functions, and pointer comparison using < and > will NOT be tested. |
| Use [ ][ ] in matrix class for indexing. | | Reinforce vector of vectors and mimic notation for built-in arrays. |
| Use #include and #ifndef idiom in header files. | No other use of preprocessor; const variables used instead of #define. |
| Use escape sequences, \n, \t, \\, \',\" | |
| Use value, reference, and const reference parameters. |
| Recognize that values returned by operator [ ] for string and vector can be assigned to, e.g., s[0] = 'a' is allowed. | Read and use reference return types and understand the implications of returning reference to local variable. | No testing of reference return types for AP CS A students. |
| Use the functions fabs, pow and sqrt from <math.h>. | |
| Use constants INT_MAX, INT_MIN from <limits.h> | |
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