Topics for Exam 1
CS 241: Data Structures, Fall 2007

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Exam will include exercises from chapters 1-5 in the text, vocabulary, questions on material covered in class, and questions on labs (perhaps writing very short snippets of code).

Chapter 1: Encapsulation

• What are the features of good programming? Trade-offs?
• Review: What are classes, objects, methods, constructors, accessors, mutators, static vs non-static, final variables.
• Understand the concepts of encapsulation, information hiding.
• What is an abstract data type? What are some examples?

Chapter 2: Polymorphism

• Simple UML class diagrams.
• Software engineering and the software development cycle.
• What is polymorphism and why do we we use it?
• Reference vs primitive types.
• Understand how references are used.
• What are wrappers and why are they used?
• Declaring, creating, and using 1D and multidimensional arrays.
• Interfaces - what are they and why are they used? What is their relationship to abstract data types?

Chapter 3: Inheritance

• What is inheritance and why do we we use it?
• How is modularity enforced? Packages, inheritance, classes, overloading ...
• What is an abstract class? Compare to an interface and a regular class.
• what does it mean for a field or method to have protected access?
• Explain how constructors work in subclasses.

Chapter 4: Stacks and Queues

• What is the stack and queue interface?
• What are examples of applications where a stack is sensible to use? A queue? Neither?
• What is the Java call stack and how does it work?
• What are generics in Java and how do they simplify list based structures?
• What is an exception? What is a try-catch structure? What are some examples of exceptions that are defined in the standard Java libraries. How do you define your own?

Chapter 5: Arraybased Structures

• What is one way of implementing a stack or queue?
• What is the list interface?
• What method does the Iterable interface contain?
• What methods are in the Iterator interface?
• The Java ArrayList implements the Iterable interface. How would you make use of this to print out the elements in the list? If you don't know the answer to this, go try writing the code in Netbeans. How do you use an "enhanced loop"?

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