Studying for this exam

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• Understand the lecture slides and discussions thoroughly.
• Revisit the MPs and HWs and make sure you understand the solutions thoroughly. Repeat any you are not comfortable with.
• Take the sample exam as a dry-run for the actual exam.

Syllabus

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The exam will cover the first 11 lectures, up to and including the lectures of type derivations. The following give examples of the kinds of questions you are likely to be asked for each topic:

• Basic OCaml
  • Know the basic constructs (e.g., match, fun, let, let rec) like the back of your hand.
  • Be able to evaluate OCaml expressions
  • Be able to determine the type of OCaml expressions
  • Be able to describe the environment that results from a sequence of declarations
  • Be able to describe the closure that is the result of evalutating a function declaration
  • Understand what effect sequencing, function application and lambda lifting has on the order of evaluation of expressions
• Recursion
  • Be able to write recursive functions, including (but not limited to) possibly tail-recursive or possibly forward recursive.
  • Be able to recognize whether a function is tail-recursive, and when a recursive call is in tail call position
  • Understand the performance benefits of tail recursion.
• Higher Order Functions (HOFs)
  • Be able to write the definitions of the common HOFs.
  • Be able to use map and fold to implement other functions, as in MP2.
  • Be able to write functions that use other functions as arguments
• Continuations and Continuation Passing Style
  • Understand what the basic idea of a continuation is.
  • Be able rewrite an operation / procedure in direct style to take a continuation to which to pass its results, while preserving the order of evaluation.
  • Be able to put a complex, possibly recursive procedure into full continutation passing style, while preserving the order of evaluation.
  • Be able to use continuations to alter the order of evaluations of expressions, as, for example, exceptions do.
• User-Defined Types
  • Be able to define recursive algebraic (variant) types in OCaml.
  • Know the difference between tuples and variant types, and when each should be used.
  • Be able to write OCaml functions over recursive algebraic types.
• Types and Type Derivations
  • Make type derivations for expressions using typing rules