Things To Be Aware Of When Attending The C++ Course

• It is assumed that you use a recent GNU g++ compiler See also the setup page. The compiler version currently used by us and by the exercise mail handler (see below) is 15.2.0 Exercises must be submitted electronically: see this directory for more information, in particular the file submitinfo.txt. Rated exercises are returned by mail to the team member who submitted the exercises or to the first team member (alphabetically ordered by last name). It's that team member's responsibility to share the rated exercises with his/her team members.
• Sets of exercises have deadlines. Deadlines are strictly enforced and are normally reached by the end (i.e., 19:00) of the second lecture following the lecture to which they apply. Exercises submitted beyond the deadline are ignored.
• You earn 1 point for each correctly completed exercise,, 0.5 point for a questionably completed exercise, and 0 points if your exercise contains too many errors or is submitted too sloppy. You also receive 0 points for exercises not submitted at/before the set's deadline.
• Exercises for which you did not receive the maximum ratings may be resubmitted ONCE, but only before their deadlines. Never resubmit exercises that were alreaded graded OK (i.e., for which you already received 1 pt.). If you do, their ratings will be lowered to .5 point.
• It's good practice to submit answers to exercises within one week after they were made available. Usually you receive ratings within 72 hours after submitting the exercises, Saturdays and Sundays excluded (not counting). Submitting answers in the first week allows you to fix errors and resubmit before the exercises' deadlines. Resubmitting is strongly advised: it usually improves your ratings and it improves your understanding of the topics covered by the exercises.
• When output needs to be presented as part of an exercise, use redirection at the operating system level to send the output to file:

  
      program > out
          
  

  Redirection causes the program's output to be written on the file out which can be edited (using a text-editor) and printed.
• For all exercises: submit all sources when completing an exercise, unless the exercise's text explicitly indicates that that is not required.
• If an exercise is formulated such that it requires results from another exercise, you may assume that those results are available and are working properly.
• When submitting exercises always briefly summarize the question before presenting your answer. If a question has several itemized sub-questions, then also use the itemized format in your answer (summarize the question per item, which is then followed by your answer).
• If your lines of code are too long for the (A4) paper's width then don't let the printer do the line-wrapping for you, as that completely kills the layout (or worse: lines may be cut off at the paper's right margin). Instead, format long lines yourself, making sure they come out nicely. Sources are rated the way they are received, and if we see sources that won't compile that way then their exercise is rated as 0.
• Mind the layout!: usually single layout violations won't lower the exercise's rating, but multiple layout violations will. Be sure to read and understand the abbreviations.shtml as well as the Hints and Tips (HATs). Be advised that the HATs are update weekly.
• You're free (and encouraged) to submit advanced exercises (marked `(advanced)'). Correctly answering advanced exercises increases your set-rating by two points (on a 10 point scale). There's no penalty for submitting incorrectly answered exercises. See also ratings.html for details.
• Answers to exercises are provided at (usually: immediately following) the exercises once their deadlines have been reached. Even if you didn't submit all exercises, study their answers as they may show you how problems can be solved. Frequently the results of earlier exercises are used for later exercises and having studied answers to exercises makes it easier to find solutions to later exercises.
• For each part (I, II and III) of this course each team receives two wild cards: twice during each part of this course your team may be able to improve the rating you received for a set of exercises by making an appointment with Jurjen, Frank or one of the TAs to talk about the set and discuss the problems you experienced and why your results were unsatisfactory. All team members must attend such wild-card talks, and each team member must actively participate in that discussion. Team members who aren't present or who don't actively participate won't be granted the wild-card points, but will have used one wild-card option. Following a (successful) wild-card talk all the set's basic exercises are rated OK.
• Before you can use a wild card you must have submitted a serious attempt to complete the exercises (i.e., you must have submitted serious attempts to complete at least 60% of that set's basic exercises), and (except for the very first set of exercises) the set's percentage for which your team requests a wild-card talk must be significantly lower than your team's average percentage. Furthermore, the appointment (not necessarily the talk itself) must be made in the week following the set's deadline.

Frank B. Brokken (f.b.brokken@rug.nl)
24 January 2026