The staff has created instructional accounts for all students who are registered for Computer Science courses in Winter Quarter 1998 but who did not already have an account on the Computer Science instructional machines. Find the list of new accounts downstairs. The list is alphabetized by last name. Look down the list until you find your name. In the "Account Name" column is the name of the computer account that has been assigned to you. It's also called a "login name". (It does not apply to IT [Information Technology, essentially the campus computer center] accounts, to ACS [Academic Computing Services, a unit of the College of Engineering] accounts, or to ECE [Electrical and Computer Engineering] accounts. It applies only to your Computer Science account.) The Computer Science instructional machines are in the basement of the east wing of building Engineering II.

If your name does not appear on this list, either you already have an account on the Computer Science instructional machines, or your name was not included on the class lists that we got from the registrar. The latter may occur if you have added a Computer Science class, as opposed to pre-registering for one. In this case, your account will be added the day after we receive notification from the registrar that you have added the class. Your account name and login name will then be posted as described above.

An initial password has been assigned to your account: the last 8 numeric digits of your student id number. (The student id number has 9 numeric digits in it, so omit the first one, and omit the hyphens to form your initial password.) Because your student id number is something that other people can probably find out , a password based on your student id number is not very secure. That is, someone other than you could login to your account, including very nasty people. Since you are the only one who is authorized to use your account, it is imperative that you change your password as soon as possible. Use the yppasswd(1) command when logged in to the Computer Science instructional machines to do so. If you have not changed your password by 5pm on the Monday of the second week of classes, logins on your account will be disabled. To get logins on your account re-enabled, stop by room 047, where the student assistants are located. You will need to bring your student id card.

1isk quotas have been installed. You may store no more than 10 Mbytes of data in your home directory.

If you have any questions, send mail to "support".

Computers

All programs and commands written for homework must work on any of the DEC, HP, and SGI systems unless specifically stated otherwise in the assignment, since security problems often arise when porting software. The workstations are named as follows:

Please be aware that some of the workstations may be down at any given time, so if the one you try doesn't seem to work, try another one.

You can log on to the instructional systems in two ways: directly into a workstation in the basement of Engineering Unit II, or through a network login program (rlogin(1) or telnet(1)) on the UC Davis network.

The homework will consist of both programming exercises and written questions. This handout describes some general thoughts and techniques for doing homework, as well as what is required, how to submit it, how late homeworks are handled, and other administrative matters.

Turning In Homework

All homework is due at the beginning of the class on the due date, unless noted otherwise on the assignment. (This way, you have no incentive to skip the class while finishing your homework at the last minute!) These will be graded and returned to you as quickly as possible; we'll try for three class periods, but can't guarantee it (especially since we have no grader so far ).

For written homework, please turn in either an ASCII or a PostScript version of your answers (you can use any text processor you like to generate these). If you submit PostScript, please be sure the file will print on our department printers (use ghostscript or gs to check this; if they display it properly, it should be okay). If your file is a postscript file, choose a name that ends in ".ps"; if it is an ASCII file, please choose a name that ends in ".txt". For programs, turn in the source code and any related information (such as man pages and README files).

For programs, you are free to use any programming language that is available on the CSIF and that the ECS 153 graders can get to; so C or assembly is acceptable, any of the languages in the programming languages class is acceptable (assuming compilers and interpreters are available in the CSIF), and if you can write your programs in such a way that troff(1) or latex(1) can execute them, that's fine too. (Yes, someone once wrote a BASIC interpreter as a set of troff macros. It was very slow, but it worked.) But use lots of comments!

Turn in both your written exercises and programs electronically. Suppose your program for homework 3 is in the files answers.ps and prog.c. Then, to turn it in, say

handin cs153r hw3 answers.ps prog.c

Doing Written Exercises

When you are asked to analyze something, or explain something, please be complete, and show your work (including any commands you give, and their output, to show how you did the problem); otherwise, even if you get the right answer, you will get ZERO points. Think your answer through and do a rough draft. Write clearly and cogently. If the question asks for an opinion, state your opinion clearly, justify it, and don't ramble. Answers which start, "My opinion is yes ..." and conclude with " ... on the other hand it could equally well be no" won't get much credit.

Doing Programming Exercises

We cannot overemphasize the importance of taking time to design your program, or outline and draft your answer, thoroughly. More programming problems arise from improper design than anything else, and the few hours you spend on design will be amply repaid by shorter coding and debugging phases. So do think the design and interfaces through, and -- as always -- try to find the simplest way to do the assignment (within the limits given in the assignment, of course)!

Do not leave assignments for the last minute. The assignments are non-trivial and will require significant design time before you start programming and debugging. When we decide on the due dates, we assume you will spend significant amounts of time on design as well as coding and debugging. If you choose not to do this, you will have difficulty finishing the assignments on time.

We do not mind being asked for help; indeed, we welcome it because it helps us know what the students are finding difficult or confusing, and sometimes a few words about the problem in class will clarify the assignment immensely. We do mind being asked for help before you have tried to think the problem through; the classic objectionable question (this really happened) occurred on a homework assignment in which the class was given a buggy program. The assignment said the program did not work, and the homework was to debug it and make it work. Within 10 minutes of the end of the class during which the assignment was given out, the instructor got this request for help: "The program doesn't run. What do I do now?"

So, before asking for help, please be sure that you have:

• spent a significant amount of time on the design of your solution;
• used a debugger (or the debugging commands of the simulator) if the problem is a programming bug;
• read all relevant handouts, sections of the textbook, and news articles (because your question may be answered there); and
• tried everything you could think of to solve the problem.

When you come to us, or send us a note, asking for help, please bring whatever you have done to solve the problem, because the first question we will ask you is "What have you tried to solve the problem?" This isn't because we think you're wasting our time; it's because understanding how you have tried to solve the problem will help us figure out exactly what your difficulty is and what we can do to help you. Remember, we will do everything we can to avoid solving the problem for you; when we give you help, our goal is to help you solve the problem yourself.

What We Look For In Programming Exercises

When we grade your homework, we look for simplicity, clarity, elegance, and documentation. Here's a rough weighting of the various factors that go into the grade of each program:

Correctness	60%
Commenting, ease of reading	20%
Clean, readable output	10%
Documentation (README, man page, etc.)	10%

If a program does not compile (or assemble), the maximum you can get is 30% of the value of the program. So check your programs before you submit them!

Late Homework

You can turn in your homework up to one class period late (unless the assignment says otherwise). If you turn it in late, we will grade it normally, and then deduct 20% as a late penalty. Requests for exceptions will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Grade Appeals

If you feel that there is an error in grading, please come see me or the TA and we'll look over it (and possibly talk with you about it). However, don't dally; any such request must be made within one week of when the grades were made available. After that, we won't change your grade.

handin - file submission program

SYNOPSIS

/usr/pkg/bin/handin touser [ subdirectory [ files ... ] ]

DESCRIPTION

handin provides a secure means of submitting files to another user, recounting what has already been submitted, and listing what subdirectories exist for containing submissions.

USAGE

Submitting files

With touser, subdirectory and files all specified, each file is copied to ~touser/handin/subdirectory/fromuser, named with the original file's basename(1), and made owned by touser. The directory fromuser is made if it doesn't already exist and is named after the invoking user. Each file specified should have a basename(1) unique among any files already submitted by that user to subdirectory, unless overwriting is desired.

Recounting submissions

Without files specified, information on previous submissions by the user to the specified subdirectory is shown.

Listing existing subdirectories

Run with only touser specified, handin just lists the existing subdirectories (regardless of accessability).

EXAMPLES

The following examples illustrate the use as a homework submission facility to the pseudo-user ``cs101'' created for this purpose:

example1% handin cs101
Existing subdirectories (comments in parentheses):
Asn1    (Due Mar 18)
Asn2    (Due Mar 25)
example2% handin cs101 Asn1 part1 part2
Submitting part1... ok
Submitting part2... ok
example3% handin cs101 Asn1
The following input files have been received:
Thu Mar 17 14:50:49 1994        1599 bytes      part1
Thu Mar 17 14:50:49 1994        3412 bytes      part2

rcvhandin(8)

DIAGNOSTICS

handin itself provides only a little of the diagnostic information that's given and returns the number of errors encountered as its exit status. Any other information comes from rcvhandin(8).

Skipping file: file non-existant or irregular

The named file didn't exist or was probably a directory. The user should check to make sure that the file they specified was indeed the file they intended to submit.

Skipping file: file not readable

The named file was not readable by the user.

Submitting file... failed [: reason ]

The named file was not successfully submitted. If at all possible a reason is provided by rcvhandin(8).

Submitting file... ok

The named file was successfully submitted.

NOTES

handin is really just a front-end to the rcvhandin(8) program. The primary function of handin is to open the named files with the effective user ID of the invoking user and pass on their contents to the rcvhandin(8) program having the effective user ID of touser. This design provides a simple and portable means for implementing a file submission facility in even a non-homogeneous, network-file-system environment.

AUTHOR

Lou Langholtz, Department of Computer Science, University of Utah, 1994