42-ExamPrep

Tips and resources for Exam Preparation

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Table o'Contents

• Exam Tips 
  • Setting up the Exam Dev Environment 💻
  • Logging into Examshell 🐚
  • Submitting to the Vogsphere 🌐
  • Exam Exercises 🧪
    • Exam Rank 2
    • Exam Rank 3
    • License ©️

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Exam Tips 

• Arrive early to the cluster for exams (15/20 minutes) to have time to setup your exam dev environment.

From the moment you are assigned a computer you can login right away with the credentials provided. Expect something like:

login : exam

password : exam

Setting up the Exam Dev Environment 💻

Point a terminal to your ~/ directory and add the following lines to your .zshrc, .gdbinit and .vimrc files.

If any of these files does not exist, create it. This should be the case for both .vimrc and .gdbinit.

• .zshrc

Add convenient aliases:

# Compile with warnings & debug symbols
alias ccw='cc -Wall -Wextra -Werror -g'

# Git
alias ga='git add'
alias gst='git status'
alias gc='git commit -m'

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• .gdbinit

This line allows GDB to load a .gdbinit file from any working directory in the system.

Note

Check out my get_next_line repo for more info on using .gdbinit.

set auto-load safe-path /

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• .vimrc

A basic vim configuration, edit this to your liking.

runtime! defaults.vim

syntax on
set mouse=a	" Enable mouse
set noswapfile	" Disable swap files

set ruler
set number
set relativenumber

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4

set autoindent
set smartindent

runtime! ftplugin/man.vim " Open man pages in Vim

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Logging into Examshell 🐚

• You can only log into examshell right on the starting time of the exam.

• Use your 42 student login and password credentials to get access to examshell.

• You will be assigned an exercise randomly at each level.

• You can only progress to Level 2 after you have completed Level 1, and so on.

Note

You do NOT need to conform to Norminette's syntax rules while solving the exam.

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Submitting to the Vogsphere 🌐

• This is where the git aliases we defined in .zshrc come in. To validate each exercise, first you need to upload it to the vogsphere using git commands.

Tip

• Never use git add . (or the alias ga .) to avoid staging files that are not required by the subject. Always specify the name of the file/files you want to stage.

• Use and abuse git status (or the alias gst) to make sure you only commit files required by the subject.

• If you want to be extra cautious, setup a .gitignore at the root of the exam's submission directory, with contents similar to the following:

.gitignore
*/a.out
*/main.c
*/gdb.txt
*/.gdbinit

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Exam Exercises 🧪

Exam Rank 2

The Rank 2 Exam has four levels, comprised of several exercises each.

Tip

ft_isspace is a particularly helpful function when solving a lot of the exercises through every level of the exam.

Here follow the solutions to all exam exercises (as of January 2024), including all test code and .gdbinit files developed to test and study each exercise.

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Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
first_word	alpha_mirror	add_prime_sum	flood_fill
fizzbuzz	camel_to_snake	epur_str	fprime
ft_putstr	do_op	expand_str	ft_itoa
ft_strcpy	ft_atoi	ft_atoi_base	ft_list_foreach
ft_strlen	ft_strcmp	ft_list_size	ft_list_remove_if
ft_swap	ft_strcspn	ft_range	ft_split
repeat_alpha	ft_strdup	ft_rrange	rev_wstr
rev_print	ft_strpbrk	hidenp	rostring
rot_13	ft_strrev	lcm	sort_int_tab
rotone	ft_strspn	paramsum	sort_list
search_and_replace	inter	pgdc
ulstr	is_power_of_2	print_hex
	last_word	rstr_capitalizer
	max	str_capitalizer
	print_bits	tab_mult
	reverse_bits
	snake_to_camel
	swap_bits
	union
	wdmatch

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Exam Rank 3

For Rank 3 Exam you will have to solve a "mini" ft_printf or get_next_line exercise.

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ft_print	get_next_line
ft_printf	get_next_line

Warning

I'll be updating this repo with more tips and resources as I progress through the Common Core.

Good luck with the exams!

License ©️

This work is published under the terms of 42 Unlicense.

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