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Saint Louis University

Computer Science 180
Data Structures

Michael Goldwasser

Fall 2008

Dept. of Math & Computer Science

Programming Assignment 03
Web History

Due: Thursday, 16 October 2008, 11:59pm

Please see the general programming webpage for details about the programming environment for this course, guidelines for programming style, and details on electronic submission of assignments.

The files you may need for this assignment can be downloaded here.

Collaboration Policy

For this assignment, you must work individually in regard to the design and implementation of your project.

Please make sure you adhere to the policies on academic integrity in this regard.


Contents:


Overview

Web browsers commonly allow you to navigate through a "history" of web pages which have previously been visited. The mechanism is somewhat like a stack, in that the most recently visited pages are at the top of the history and revisited when the "back" button is pressed.

However, the history does not really have infinite capacity. In reality, there may exist a fixed limit on the size of the history. The issue arises as to what should happen when the capacity is exhausted and a new item is pushed onto the stack. One possibility is to throw an exception. But this is not how a Web browser behaves. If it only has room to save 50 pages in its history and yet you visit more pages, it will make room in the history for a new page by throwing away the page which is on the very bottom of the history (i.e., the least recently visited page). The formal Stack interface does not help, as it gives us no way to directly access or remove the object on the bottom of the stack.

In this assignment, we define a new ADT which we call a BoundedStack. The interface for a BoundedStack is very similar to the interface given for a Stack. However in the case when the capacity is exhausted, a call to push will result in the placement of the new page at the expense of the loss of the least recently accessed page. We formalize this interface as an abstract class definition, provided online in file BoundedStack.h.

/**
 * Interface for a bounded stack: A collection of objects that are inserted
 * and removed according to the last-in first-out principle, but with
 * overflow handled by the removal of the least-recently accessed item.
 */
class BoundedStack {
 public:
  /**
   * Returns number of objects in the stack.
   */
  size_t size() const;

  /** 
   * Returns true if the stack is empty, false otherwise.
   */
  bool empty() const;

  /** 
   * Returns constant reference to the top object in the stack.
   * Throws BoundedStackEmptyException if the stack is empty. 
   */
  const string& top() const throw(BoundedStackEmptyException); 

  /**
   * Inserts an object at the top of the stack.
   */
  void push(const string& obj); 

  /** 
   * Removes the top object from the stack.  
   * Throws BoundedStackEmptyException if the stack is empty.
   */
  void pop() throw(BoundedStackEmptyException);

  /**
   * Destructor
   */
  ~BoundedStack();
};

Your Task

For this assignment, you will be required to give two different implementations for the BoundedStack interface, as described below. We will provide you with sample initial files for these classes.

Simplifications

To make things a bit easier for this assignment,


Files We Are Providing

All such files can be downloaded here.


Use of the Driver

WebHistoryDriver is a text-based, menu-driven program for testing your BoundedStack implementations. The menu allows you to call any combination of BoundedStack methods. You may even call the constructors for either of the two implementations anytime you want to restart with a different capacity.

By default, the program takes input from the keyboard. However the driver has an optional feature which allows it to read input from a file rather than from a keyboard. The file should have the identical characters which you would use if you were typing them yourself on the keyboard. This feature simply allows you to test and retest your program on a particular input without having to retype the input each time you want to run the program. It is also convenient at times when running with a debugger to have the input read from a file rather than from the keyboard. If the program reaches the end of the file without exiting, then it will revert back to reading input from the keyboard for the remainder of the program.

To use this feature, you must specify the exact filename (including any suffix), as a single argument at runtime. Details on how to provide such arguments are given in the general programming webpage.


Black-Box, Unit Testing

Part of developing good software is also knowing how to perform meaningful testing of your software. Our hypothetical motivation for this data structure was that it might be used in the larger context of a web browser. One approach to testing would be to wait until th entire project were completed and then to test the final result. Of course, if the browser history were not operating properly at that point, we would have to wonder whether the problem was due to an errant implementation of the data structure, to an errant use of a well-written data structure, or some other problem. Rather than relying on a test of the entire end product, a useful approach is to make sure that each individual piece works in isolation. This is called unit testing. So for this assignment, you will develop a test plan for evaluating the correctness of the BoundedStack implementations without actually considering the larger application (in fact, we will not actually be writing any such hypothetical web browser). To perform unit testing of this data structure, you will use the provided driver which allows you to individually call any of the public methods supported by the data structure.

There is another issue we wish for you to consider when developing test plans. Often, testing is performed in close coordination with an examination of source code. For example, we may write some code or view some code, and then try to test that particular chunk of code. There is an inherent danger in relying only on such tests. In particular, if the tests are based on the same flow of thoughts as (errant) code, we are more likely to forget to test for a particular combination of events that were not considered by the code. The practice of "black box" testing is to design a set of tests based purely on the formal specifications for a data structure, but without actually seeing the source code.

On this assignment, we will have you develop a black-box unit test plan for BoundedStack implementations. Specifically, you must submit a plain text file named "inputfile" which will be used to test other students' implementations. The goal is to create test input which causes as many as possible of the other students' programs to fail in some way. Because our execution of student tests will be automated, you must make sure that your "inputfile" strictly adheres to the file format which is expected by the text-based driver, WebHistoryDriver, described earlier. Your file may use at most 100 commands. If your input file contains more than the prescribed number of commands, we will simply truncate the end of the file. In order to make sure that your inputfile follows the proper format, we strongly recommend that you run your program on your inputfile to make sure it is accepted by the driver.

Here is a sample input file, appropriately formatted.


Files to Submit


Grading Standards

The assignment is worth 10 points. Eight points will be awarded based on our own evaluation of your assignment and the readme file. One additional point will be awarded fractionally based on how well your program performs on other students' test inputs. The final point will be awarded fractionally based on how well your test input fools other students' flawed programs.


Hints Regarding Modular Arithmetic

When dealing with an array in a circular fashion, there are many possible ways for adjusting indicies as they "wrap around" the ends of the array. The text chooses to use modular arithmetic (the "%" operator in C++). Please note that its precedence is equivalent to multiplication and division, and therefore the expression a+b%c+d is evaluated as a+(b%c)+d by default.


Michael Goldwasser
CSCI 180, Fall 2008
Last modified: Thursday, 16 October 2008
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