February 8:
Question:
How do I deal with multiple given names? For example: "Francis Xavier"
and "Harold Talleyrand".
Answer:
Treat them as though they are a single given name that happens to
include a blank. The given name in the resulting record would be: "Francis
Xavier Harold Talleyrand".
February 15:
Question:
Do I need to deal with upper and lower case letters? Does Smith match
smith?
Answer:
No. To keep things simple there must be an exact match. So Smith does
not match smith.
February 24:
Question: Hi, I was wondering about assignment 5.. my program
will
work depending on
how we're supposed to treat the case in which the student
number is null.
What I've done is overload the constructor so the student
number will be
null if someone only enters surname and given name. But,
if by null you mean
that the person is going to enter all three variables but
just "" for the
student number, then things change. I could write a
longer, messier program
to deal with either but I don't think that's what the
assignment is looking
for. So how is the student number going to take on the
value null? And
should I have to be flexible for either case?
Answer: There is no need to provide an overloaded constructor.
(To students who don't know what an overloaded constructor is don't worry
we will get to it in the next few weeks.) As it says in the assignment
"A missing student number or missing mark
is represented by a null string, a string of length zero." so just
provide a single constructor and pass a
null string as the argument to the student number parameter in the
constructor.
February 26
Question:
If both student names are null, and the student numbers
match, do we
have the same student? What if all the names and student
numbers are
null?
Answer: Please reread the assignment. For a pair of student records
to
match they must have matching (NOT missing) surnames and student numbers
or they have matching surnames and one of the student numbers is missing
but the marks mesh.
Question: When we are comparing given names, are we case
sensitive?
Answer: Yes, but you can assume that normal conventions for upper
and lower case letters in proper nouns are followed so you should be able
to just do a normal comparison of names.
Question:
When we produce a new StudentRecord in mergeStudent, should
the
existing StudentRecord objects remain the same?
Answer:
Yes.
February 27:
Question:
What about programming style?
Answer:
While
you will not be marked on style until assignment 6, you are encouraged to
use good programming style. Here is a style
guide that you should follow.
February 28:
Question:> I'm wondering what happens when both
students are missing the mark.
The assignment says marks mesh when "marks are either the same or they
are
found in one student but not the other".
This can be read two ways
1. two null marks are the same
2. for two marks to be the same they must numerically be the same and
therefore
if two students are both missing the same mark they are not the same
student
which seems odd.
Answer: Your #1 suggestion is NOT what was intended. Two marks that
are missing are not two marks that match. They must match numerically.
I don't think your #2 suggestion is odd as you suggest. Remember the
description of the rationale in the introduction
to this problem. This is a single student who has moved (back and forth)
between tutorial sections so one record is from one TA with course work
that that TA marked and the other
record is from the other TA and includes the course work that TA marked.
The two TAs would have marked and recorded the marks for different
course work.
This pattern is similar to the missing student number question described
in the question from February 26. Do I see a place for a helper method
here?
Question:I just want to double check if the assignment 5 for the
csc108 has been extended to monday march 4, 2002?
Answer:Yes. The assignment on both campus has been extended to
Monday, March 4 at noon.