Programming basics
INTRODUCTION
In its simplest form a computer program can be seen as a list
of instructions that a computer has to work through in a logical
sequence in order to carry out a specific task. The instructions that
make up a program are all stored in memory on the computer along
...
Computer
Science
Includes AS and A-level
Bob Reeves
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, Contents
Introduction v
Section One Fundamentals of programming
1 Programming basics 2
2 Programming concepts 8
3 Basic operations in programming languages 14
4 Subroutines, local and global variables 22
5 Structured programming 28
6 Object-oriented programming concepts 35
Practice questions 46
Section Two Fundamentals of data structures
7 Data Structures and abstract data types 50
8 Queues and stacks 57
9 Graphs and trees 67
10 Hash tables and dictionaries 77
11 Vectors 84
Practice questions 90
Section Three Fundamentals of algorithms
12 Graph and tree traversal 92
13 Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm 101
14 Search algorithms - binary, binary tree and
linear search 110
15 Reverse Polish Notation 117
16 Sorting algorithms – bubble and merge 124
Practice questions 132
Section Four Fundamentals of computational thinking
17 Abstraction and automation 134
18 Finite state machines 145
19 The Turing machine 150
20 Regular and context-free languages 156
21 Maths for regular expressions 164
22 Big O notation and classification of algorithms 169 iii
Practice questions 179
Section Five Fundamentals of data representation
23 Number systems 182
24 Number bases 187
25 The binary number system 194
26 Coding systems 207
27 Encryption 220
Practice questions 228
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