ECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering/ ECE 220 Midterm (A)| Questions and Answers | Latest updated 2025/26 - University of Alberta.

ECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 1 of 12 ECE 220 Midterm (A) March 12th, 2025, 1:00PM Signature: Instructions • PRINT YOUR NAME and Student ID into the boxes above. • Sign in the Signature box. • Write your name and your Student ID on the General Purpose Answer Sheet. Your Student ID should be left-aligned, e.g. • Fill in the bubbles on the General Purpose Answer Sheet to code in your name and ID. • Write 100000 in Special Code on the General Purpose Answer Sheet. • This is a CLOSED BOOK exam. Time allowed: 50 minutes. • Calculators, cell phones, or computers of any kind are not permitted. • This exam, worth 90 points, counts 15% toward your final grade in this course. • Write your answers properly on the answer sheet with an HB pencil. If the optical reader cannot clearly read your answer, the mark on that question will be 0. • All the C code provided in this exam is ANSI standard and uses the ASCII character set. • For questions regarding code fragments, assume that all the necessary header files and surrounding code are provided. • Questions are weighted differently in each part: Points o Part 1 - (5 questions at 3 point each) 15 o Part 2 - (5 questions at 5 points each) 25 o Part 3 - (5 questions at 6 points each) 30 o Part 4 - (2 questions at 10 points each) 20 • This question booklet must be returned with your General Purpose Answer Sheet for you to get credit for this exam. • IMPORTANT: Answer Parts 1, 2 and 3 in the General Purpose Answer Sheet. For Part 4 use the space provided in this booklet. Name: Student ID:ECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 2 of 12 Part 1: [15 points total – 5 Questions – 3 points each] – Multiple Choice Questions Answer the following questions starting at question number 1 on the front of your General Purpose Answer Sheet] 1. What is the output produced by the following code? int x = 5, y = 10; int *p1, *p2; p1 = &x; p2 = &y; *p1 = *p2 + 2; printf("%d %dn", x, y); a) 5 10 b) 12 10 c) 10 12 d) 7 10 e) 5 12 2. What is wrong with the following code? int arr[5] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}; int *ptr = arr; ptr = ptr + 2; arr = ptr; a) You cannot modify (reassign) array names b) Array index out of bounds c) Incorrect pointer arithmetic d) Incorrect array initialization e) No error, the code is fineECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 3 of 12 3. Which of the following correctly declares (is a prototype) a function that takes an integer and returns a pointer to a character? a) function char fun(int); b) char * fun(int); c) void fun(int, char); d) char fun(int); e) char = fun(int); 4. What is the output of the following program? #include stdio.h int main() { int arr[] = {10, 20, 30, 40, 50}; int *p = arr; printf("%d ", *p++); printf("%d ", (*p)++); printf("%d ", *p); return 0; } a) 10 20 20 b) 10 20 21 c) 10 21 21 d) 20 20 21 e) 20 21 21ECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 4 of 12 5. What is the value of x after this code executes? int x = 10; int *ptr = &x; *ptr += 5; ptr = NULL; a) 0 b) 5 c) 10 d) 15 e) undefined behaviourECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 5 of 12 Part 2. [25 points total – 5 Questions – 5 points each] – Multiple Choice Questions [Answer the following questions starting at question number 6 on the front of your General Purpose Answer Sheet.] 6. What will this code print? int arr[5] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}; int *p = arr; int sum = 0; for (int i = 0; i 5; i++) { sum += *(p + i); if (i % 2 == 0) continue; sum += i; } printf("%d", sum); a) 15 b) 19 c) 18 d) 20 e) 25 7. What will be the value of results after the following code runs (Hint: the least significant byte is stored first)? int a = 0x; char *p = (char*)&a; char result = *p; a) 0x12 b) 0x78 c) 0x56 d) 0x34 e) Cannot be determinedECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 6 of 12 8. What will happen if this code is executed? int* create_array(int size) { int arr[size]; for (int i = 0; i size; i++) arr[i] = i; return arr; } int main() { int* data = create_array(5); printf("%d", data[2]); return 0; } a) It prints 2 b) It causes a memory leak c) Causes undefined behavior (returning address of local variable) d) Compilation error due to variable-length array e) It crashes (segmentation error) 9. What is the output of this nested loop? for (int i = 1; i = 3; i++) { for (int j = 1; j = i; j++) { printf("%d", j); } } a) 123123 b) 112123 c) 123 d) 111213 e) 121233ECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 7 of 12 10. What is the output of the following program? #include stdio.h #include string.h int main() { char str1[20] = "Hello"; char str2[20] = "World"; char *p1 = str1; char *p2 = str2; while(*p1) p1++; while(*p2) *p1++ = *p2++; printf("%s", str1); return 0; } a) Hello b) World c) HelloWorld d) WorldHello e) HelloWorldHelloECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 8 of 12 Part 3: [30 points total – 5 Questions – 6 points each] – Multiple Choice Questions [Answer the following questions starting at question number 11 on the front of your General Purpose Answer Sheet.] 11. What will this for loop print? for (int i = 1, j = 1; i + j 10; i *= 2, j += i / 2) { printf("%d ", i + j); } a) 2 3 5 9 b) 2 4 7 c) 2 4 8 d) 2 3 6 e) 2 3 6 9 12. What is the value of result after this code runs? int arr[5] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}; int result = 0; for (int i = 0; i 5; i++) { if (i % 2 == 0) { for (int j = 0; j i; j++) { result += arr[j]; } } else { result += arr[i]; } } a) 16 b) 19 c) 20 d) 22 e) 28ECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 9 of 12 13. What is the final value of count? int count = 0; int i = 1; while (i = 15) { if (i % 3 == 0 || i % 5 == 0) { count++; } i++; } a) 5 b) 7 c) 8 d) 10 e) 15 14. What is the output of this nested switch statement? int x = 2, y = 3; switch (x) { case 1: printf("A"); break; case 2: printf("B"); switch (y) { case 1: printf("C"); break; case 2: printf("D"); break; default: printf("E"); } break; default: printf("F"); } a) BEF b) BC c) BE d) BD e) FECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 10 of 12 15. What does the following function do? void mystery(char *str) { char *start = str; char *end = str; char temp; while(*end) end++; end--; while(start end) { temp = *start; *start = *end; *end = temp; start++; end--; } } a) Calculates string length b) Sorts characters in the string c) Reverses the string d) Removes duplicates from the string e) Counts occurrences of charactersECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 11 of 12 Part 4: [20 points total – 2 Questions – 10 points each] – Programming Questions [Use the space in the booklet to provide your answers.] 16. Write a function void print_pattern(int n) that prints a pattern of asterisks in the shape of a right-angled triangle with n rows. For example, if n = 4, it should print: * ** *** **** void print_pattern(int n) { /* space for your code */ for (int i = 1; i = n; i++) { for (int j = 1; j = i; j++) { printf("*"); } printf("n"); } }ECE220 – Programming for Electrical Engineering page 12 of 12 17. Write a function char* str_reverse(char* str) that takes a string as input and returns a new dynamically allocated string with the characters in reverse order. Do not modify the original string. Remember to handle memory allocation properly. char* str_reverse(char* str) { // your code here if (str == NULL) return NULL; int len = 0; while (str[len] != '0') len++; char* result = (char*)malloc((len + 1) * sizeof(char)); if (result == NULL) return NULL; for (int i = 0; i len; i++) result[i] = str[len - 1 - i]; result[len] = '0'; return result; } END OF EXAM