Teacher "Ambiguity"

EsX_Raptor

United States2802 Posts

May 03 2009 01:03 GMT

So I'm studying for my finals next week, but the review questions our CS teacher gave us are so freaking ambiguous it's not even funny.

It goes like this:

Describe the strings (by giving the name of a language construct) that are represented by the regular expression:

([A-Z]|[a-z]|_)([A-Z]|[a-z]|[0-9]|_)*

Well... from that we can observe that the following:

FA009_zbT
_AA09
z
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

And so on, follow the rules of that regular expression. But I'm still confused what's that guy asking for!?

allluckysevens7777

United States53 Posts

May 03 2009 01:22 GMT

I'd say that it describes identifiers. As in, most (all?) programming languages don't allow variable/function/method/type names to start with digits.

I agree that it is a very ambiguous question though, unless he specifically discussed said language constructs. What class is this for?

tec27

United States3720 Posts

May 03 2009 01:24 GMT

Yeah, he's looking for you to give answers as things like "variable names" or "class names" or "function names", etc. Thats what he means by "by giving the name of a language construct", I think

EsX_Raptor

United States2802 Posts

May 03 2009 01:29 GMT

Programming Language Concepts

I think you're right, I just want to know what he means with "by giving the name of a language construct," he never explained to us those (aren't there like, LOTS?)

I know that:

(\+|\-)?[0-9]+\.[0-9]+

represents floating point numbers... so that's why I think you're right that the previous represents identifiers.

edit: yeah, thank you guys!

keV.

United States3214 Posts

May 03 2009 03:37 GMT

On May 03 2009 10:24 tec27 wrote:
Yeah, he's looking for you to give answers as things like "variable names" or "class names" or "function names", etc. Thats what he means by "by giving the name of a language construct", I think

This sounds right.

AcrossFiveJulys

United States3612 Posts

May 03 2009 04:02 GMT

lol good luck man. What year are you?

Tyrant

Korea (South)234 Posts

May 03 2009 05:19 GMT

I'd just draw a huge meaty manhood on the paper and hope that he's into dudes.

darktreb

United States3019 Posts

May 03 2009 10:32 GMT

Other people have already given the right answer but you should try not to be intimidated by questions like these. Assuming you know your regular expressions, you know that the question was basically asking "what doesn't start with a number and consists of letters, numbers, and underscores?" Thinking about it that way, it becomes a lot clearer.

The_Australian

Australia458 Posts

May 03 2009 12:59 GMT

i remember i had a prompt once for English class (the topic was Jason and the argonauts) that was literally "jason, discuss" like, wtf? so i can relate a bit to your problem.

errol1001

454 Posts

May 03 2009 13:00 GMT

#10

On May 03 2009 21:59 The_Australian wrote:
i remember i had a prompt once for English class (the topic was Jason and the argonauts) that was literally "jason, discuss" like, wtf? so i can relate a bit to your problem.

lol, relate to what problem? The question he posted was in fact not ambiguous at all..

EsX_Raptor

United States2802 Posts

May 03 2009 20:45 GMT

#11

I'm a junior, but I'm 19 (so I don't know crap compared to the other guys...) sorry, my brain was literally fried that day (hours of study) now as much as I hate to admit it (literally) it is true what they say about having a good sleep, breakfast, etc, before taking a test x.x

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