Assignment 1

Chin's Assignment 1 webpage
Chin's Assignment 1 Q+A

Chin's solution: HTML version | Perl version
My solution: HTML version | Perl version

This assignment (as most will be) is out of 10 points. The following is how the grading breaks down.

Coding Practices (40%)

Documentation: 20%

• author and (date or version or class+assignment)
• description of program as a whole
• description of each function/subroutine, including possible/required parameters and result returned (and any side effects)
• brief comments on complicated lines/blocks code
• in short, help others quickly find their way through your code

Formatting and good practices: 15%

• use obvious/relevant names for variables
• consistently indent blocks of code
• keep lines short (less than 80 characters/screen width)
• break up long chunks of code within a single subprogram into related sections by adding an extra line of white space between them (just like how you break up long passages of text into paragraphs)
• break up your program into smaller, modular subroutines or functions when it makes sense to do so
• in short, make your code itself easy to read

Usability: 5%

• check spelling and formating of messages to the screen
• make error messages informative
• include adequate feedback to users of your program
• catch errors whenever possible and fail gracefully
• in short, make your program easy to use (as long as it doesn't conflict with assignment specifications)

Assignment Requirements (60%)

File and I/O: 20%

• prints a usage message when given too many arguments
• takes a file argument
• reports if that file is inaccessible
• accepts content redirected through STDIN

Matching: 20%

• matches hrefs properly

Results: 15%

• prints only unique
• sorted

Miscellaneous: 5%

• My gestalt impression, odds and ends, little bonuses and minor omissions.

Comments

I went easy on the documentation, coding practices etc. this time, to let you warm up. For example, I didn't take off more than 0.5 for no documentation, when I should have taken off 2.0. You've been warned! I also went easy if you asked for a filename instead of using piped content, since this was a pretty common error.

Note that not all the comments I include in your emails are related to a grade deduction (though they may have impacted the miscellenous 5% in some way). They are just things I noticed.

Usually I don't mind very much how you produce the results required by an assignment. If you want to use a different technique to achieve the same ends, go for it. Just document it! Make it obvious what you're doing and why.