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Midterm Exam Prep Material

The following is a collection of things you should be comfortable with going into the midterm. It's not exhaustive, and I can pretty much guarantee that no question on the midterm will be a direct restatement of anything below, but if you understand everything in this document, you have the foundations to approach any question on the midterm.

We also include some exams that were previously given for this course. You'll notice that some of the problems have already appeared as homework assignments, and that some practice exams have shared problems. The primary value of the exams is to give you a sense of how the exam will be structured, and what you should expect both in terms of difficulty and length.

Practice Exams

Midterm Topics

  • OCaml
    • Basics
      • Literals and operators
      • Basic types
      • If-expressions
      • Let-expressions
      • Functions
      • Applications
      • Match-expressions
      • Recursion
        • Tail recursion
        • Mutual recursion
    • Algebraic data types
      • Common ADTs
        • Lists
          • Association lists
        • Options and results (error handling)
        • Binary trees and rose trees
      • Pattern matching
        • Deep pattern matching
    • Records and tuples
    • Parametric polymorphism
      • type parameters
    • Higher-order programming
      • Maps, filter, folds
      • Currying
  • Inference systems
    • Metavariables
    • Inference rules
    • Derivations
  • Typing
    • Contexts
    • Typing judgments
  • Semantics
    • Values
    • Semantic judgments
    • Substitution
  • 320Caml (Understand, not memorize)

General Skills

  • Write basic OCaml functions
    • Implement functions tail-recursively
    • Implement functions using particular higher-order functions
  • Reason about OCaml program
    • Determine the type of an OCaml expression
    • Determine the value of an OCaml expression
    • Determine the ADT given its use in a program
    • Determine an expression for a polymorphic type
  • Inference Systems
    • Determine the meaning of an inference rule
    • Write the inference rule based on a description of it
    • Write a derivation of a judgment given the inference rules
  • Typing
    • Determine the minimal context so that an expression is typable
    • Determine the type of an expression given the inference rules
    • Write a typing derivation of a typing judgment given the inference rules
  • Semantics
    • Determine the value of an expression given the semantic rules
    • Write a semantic derivation of a semantic judgment given the inference rules