Programming Languages Review

These flashcards cover key concepts, terms, and definitions discussed in the programming languages review, including Lisp, Scheme, AArch64, Rust, and Lambda Calculus.

Is Lisp the second-oldest programming language?

True

Which Lisp/Scheme data structure holds exactly two items?

pair/cone cell

Which function returns the first component of a cons cell / pair?

car

Which function returns the second component of a cons cell / pair?

cdr

What is the result of evaluating the Scheme expression ((lambda (x) (+ x 1)) 41)?

42

A function that captures data in its lexical environment is called a…?

Closure

A function that accepts another function as a parameter is called a…?

Higher-order function

What special symbol in the car of an s-expression causes its cdr to be returned unevaluated?

quote

Which of the following describes Scheme’s type system?

Strong

Which of the following are characteristics of Scheme’s scoping rules?

Lexical scoping

Which register stores the address of the top of the stack in aarch64?

SP

Which register stores the address of the current instruction executing in aarch64?

PC

Which register stores the return address of the currently executing instruction in aarch64?

R30 (Link register)

Which register stores the address of the current function’s stack frame in aarch64?

R29 (Frame pointer)

How many bits wide is the stack pointer’s alignment boundary?

16

The first parameter (assuming it fits) to a function is passed in which register?

R0

A function’s return value, assuming it fits, is stored in which register?

R0

Which instruction loads a page address into a register?

ADR

Which keyword makes a Rust variable mutable?

mut

What’s the main function’s signature in Rust?

fn main()

Which of the following is not an error that Rust is designed to prevent?

File handle exhaustion

In Rust, a macro is…?

A function that runs at compile time to transform the program’s syntax tree

Which of the following lifetime declarations indicates that the reference is valid for the entire program execution?

&'static str

Which of the following creates a slice of v that doesn’t contain its first element?

B) &v[1..]

Which character appears at the end of macro names?

!

Which of the following is the syntax of a Rust for-each loop?

for t in &a { … }

In C, if a program contains a statement with undefined behavior, then…?

It has no meaningful behavior before and after executing the statement

Rust’s type system…

is static, with inference to allow the programmer to leave out some types

Which of the following is not a memory allocation strategy/location?

Bin

In Rust, a named collection of methods defined for a type is called a…?

Trait

This Rust feature allows us to write code that uses variables where we would usually use actual types.

Generics

Which of the following operators allows us to propagate None / Err variants of the Option and Result data types?

?

In Rust, the compiler uses this construct directly to ensure all borrows are valid.

Lifetimes

λ Calculus was developed by whom?

Alonzo Church

Which of the following programming languages was directly influenced by λ Calculus?

Haskell

Which of the following is not a kind of term in the λ calculus?

Type signatures

Two terms that are syntactically identical when bound variables appearing in them are consistently renamed are called…?

α − equivalent

Renaming bound variables in a function being applied to avoid binding free variables in the argument is called…?

α-conversion

What is an alphabet in formal language theory?

A finite set of symbols

What kind of automaton is a parser?

PDA

What does BNF stand for?

Backus-Naur Form

In a CFG, what must appear on the left-hand side of a production?

A nonterminal

What does the symbol ϵ represent in regular expressions?

The empty string

What defines the syntax of a language?

Rules specifying legal strings

What handles tokens in a compiler?

Scanner

What is a language in formal language theory?

A set of strings

A programming language is a formal language and…?

Semantics

Which of the following operators denotes zero or more repetitions of a regular expression?

*