Assignments for COM 1122
Winter 1997

[ Assignment #1 | Assignment #2 | Assignment #3 | Assignment #4 ]

COM 1122 (Overview)
Homework Assignment #1
10 points possible

Assigned: week of 6 January.
Due: week of 13 January at beginning of class.

Get an account.
Log onto a machine in the Unix lab (room 201).
Run the help system, or use your favorite WWW browser/navigator to visit http://help.ccs.neu.edu/.
Read and understand the following help nodes:

Send mail to will, with a subject of "Homework #1", containing:
  1. The day your section meets: Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday.
  2. Your name, as you would like for me to address you.
  3. The name of the machine you logged into.
  4. Your opinion of the help system.

The subject is worth 2 points, and each of the 4 numbered items is also worth 2 points.

COM 1122 (Overview 2)
Homework Assignment #2
10 points possible 

Section:     Tuesday   Wednesday Friday
Assigned:    14 Jan    15 Jan    17 Jan
Due:         21 Jan    22 Jan    24 Jan
  1. Find some interesting Web page on the World Wide Web that most of your fellow students don't know about.
  2. Read it.
  3. Write a very short review of this Web page, suitable for posting to a class newsgroup. Be sure your review includes the URL for the Web page you have found.
  4. Send your review as email to will, with a subject of 
                Homework #2: Tuesday
      or    Homework #2: Wednesday
      or    Homework #2: Friday
    depending on your section.

This assignment is worth 10 points. The subject line is worth 1 point, the URL is worth 4 points, and the quality of your writing is worth 5 points.

COM 1122 (Overview 2)
Homework Assignment #3
10 points possible

The due date for this assignment has been pushed back a week because I garbled the assignment. Please accept my apologies.

Assigned: week of 20 January.
Due: week of 3 February at beginning of class. Note that this gives you an extra week to make up for the fact that the original statement of the assignment was garbled.

This assignment has three parts. The first part is worth 4 points, and the last two parts are worth 3 points. It is not possible to get credit for parts 2 or 3 without getting credit for part 1.

  1. Log into one of the college's Unix machines. Change to the directory below that corresponds to your section: 
            /course/com1122/Homework3/Tuesday
        /course/com1122/Homework3/Wednesday
        /course/com1122/Homework3/Friday
    Create a subdirectory within that directory, giving it the same name as your Unix login name.
  2. Change the permissions on the directory you created in part 1 so that everyone can read and execute the directory, but only you can write into it.
  3. Copy /course/com1122/assignment3 into the directory you created in part 1. Its name should be 
            /course/com1122/Homework3/<day>/<login>/assignment3
    where <day> is the day your section meets, and <login> is your login name. Do not change the contents of this file. Make sure that everyone can read but not write or execute it.

Hint: Unix regards capital letters as distinct from lower case (non-capital) letters.

Hint: To check whether you have done this assignment correctly, you will need the help of a friend who also has an account on the CCS machines. Suppose, for example, that your Unix login name is thucydides, and you are in the Tuesday section. Ask your friend to log in as himself or herself and to execute the following commands: 

    % cd /course/com1122/Homework3/Tuesday/thucydides
    % diff assignment3 /course/com1122/assignment3
    % ls -l assignment3
    -rw-r--r--  1 thucydides   1293 Jan 22 09:48 assignment3
The first two commands should not print anything. If the first command prints something, then you have made a mistake in parts 1 or 2 of the assignment. If the first command works, but the second command prints something, then you have made a mistake in part 3 of the assignment.

The permissions displayed by the third command do not have to be an exact match for those shown, because the assignment did not tell you what permissions to set for yourself or for your group. The last three permissions must be r--, however.

COM 1122 (Overview 2)
Homework Assignment #4

Assigned: week of 3 February
Due: week of 10 February at beginning of class

The goal of this homework is to let you use Emacs a little bit to edit a file. To do this homework:

  1. Work through the Emacs tutorial. Instructions for running this tutorial will appear on the startup screen when you run Emacs.
  2. Copy /course/com1122/assignment4 to a file called /course/com1122/Homework4/<login> where <login> is your login name.
  3. Use Emacs to edit /course/com1122/Homework4/<login>, following the instructions contained in that file.
  4. The instructions will tell you to change the text in certain ways. Do not make any other changes to the text.
  5. Save the file when you are done, and then exit from Emacs.

Last updated 5 February 1997.