CIT 594 Programming Languages & Techniques II
Previous Announcements

Due to an error in BitVector.java, I was failing to compress the bit vector before writing it. I have posted a corrected version; the output file should be between 0 and 4K smaller. You do not need to download the corrected version if you don't want to; the original version works, it just wastes up to 4K bytes.

For this correction, you must remember to use vec.writeBitVector(outputFile) and vec=readBitVector(inputFile) rather than outputFile.writeObject(vec) and vec=(BitVector)inputFile.readObject(). However, with the uncorrected version, it doesn't really make any difference which pair of operations you use.

I seem to have posted two different due dates (April 4 and April 11) for the extra credit assignment 8X. So--

• The extra credit program will be due April 11.
• No late extra credit programs will be accepted. Period.

Comments and clarifications on the extra credit assignment (Binary Tree Editor):

• This is not a required assignment, and you do not need to do it in order to get (or maintain) an A in the course. Doing the assignment may raise your grade; not doing it will not lower your grade.
• I expect the program to be quite difficult, and I do not expect many people to do it.
• The best way to do this program (and the way I would prefer) is to add classes to your program for Assignment 8 and turn in the whole thing--that lets me test your editor with your binary trees. However, it is a separate assignment, and should be turned in separately to Blackboard.
• The due date is Thursday, April 11. Late penalty will be 10 points per day (instead of the usual 5).
• Remember, you cannot earn more points on this than you earn on Assignment 8.
• The program must have a good, easily understood GUI; this will be a strong component in the grading.

If you run my version of the Animals! game from Forté and get a NullPointerException, it's because my program is trying to use your old animals.dat file (in Forté's forte4j/bin directory), not the animals.dat file I supplied. Remove or replace your old file, and everything should be OK.

This is partly my fault for not printing out an informative message when I get a ClassNotFoundException. I've just posted a new version of my game which prints a message in this case; this is the only change, however, so if you are reading this message, you don't need the new version.

• The next assignment has been posted
• I will post my version of the Animals! game Monday (not tomorrow, as I said in class)
• A professional thief is operating in the building--be extra careful
• I will teach a new course, CIT597, in the Fall: Advanced Java and Java-related technologies

Assignment 7 is due by midnight, Thursday, March 7. Late points will be assigned as follows:

March 8	5 points		March 21	25 points
March 9-18	10 points		March 22	30 points
March 19	15 points		March 23	35 points
March 20	20 points		Later	Not accepted

If you have trouble timing a couple of the Fibonacci methods (because they run too fast), consider this trick:

     <start timing>
     for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
          <call the factorial method>
     <stop timing>
     double microseconds = (<stop time> - <start time>) / 1000.0;