UCR CS 21: Introduction to Unix

Winter Quarter 2005

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Overview

Basic information

Course schedule

General course features and policies (please read these carefully)

• Material covered: You'll be responsible for learning material covered in lecture, in the textbook, and in lab. Lecture does not cover all required material alone. Be prepared for homework/quiz/midterm/final questions on material from the readings that was not covered in lecture.
• Academic dishonesty and collaboration policy: cheating is strongly punished, often with an F in the course, plus a letter to the vice-chancellor; UCR suspends or expels repeat offenders. Help us detect cheating by reporting cheating anonymously at: https://www.cs.ucr.edu/cheating/. You should also visit the offical Judicial Affairs webpage for the University.
  • Academic dishonesty statement - All students are required to sign the academic dishonesty guidelines of the University to verify that you have read and understand these guidelines. You should also read the University policies. Students not submitting the signed statement will receive a grade delay in the class until the form is returned.
  • Midterm, final, quizzes, lab practicals - Obviously there will be no collaboration allowed in any of these areas
  • At-home programming assignments - Limited collaboration may be acceptable, but programs must represent YOUR OWN original work. Sharing code or team-coding are strictly not allowed. Copying code from ANY source (any book, current or past students, past solutions, any work you have turned in for a previous class, web, etc) is strictly not allowed even with citation. Collaboration may consist of discussing the general approach to solving the problem, but should not involve communicating in code or even pseudo-code. Students may help others find bugs. Your code MUST be unique -- the odds of randomly producing similar code is very low. Computing, like surgery or driving a car or playing golf, can only be learned by doing it yourself!
  • PROTECT YOUR CODE!! - Do not allow anybody to purposefully or inadvertently obtain a copy of your code even after this course is completed. For example, if you print your code and the printer is out of paper, DO NOT LEAVE. Either get paper from systems or cancel your print job. If you leave, later on someone will put paper in the printer and out will come your code. Furthermore, do not throw any code into the trashcans in the lab.
  • It is considered against computer account policy to tamper with another's account. Thus, if you give someone else your password and they copy your work or turn something in for you, both parties will have committed academic dishonesty.
  • Be aware that programs are automatically compared to the current and prior quarter's programs for plagiarism, using a sophisticated code-comparison tool that ignores insignificant differences (like whitespace and variable names). If you're smart enough to fool the instructors, TAs, and code-comparison tools, you're more than smart enough to do the programs on your own!
  • A couple more notes. Be aware that completed exams are photocopied. Those photocopies may be used for comparison with exams submitted for regrades, so don't make changes. Also, be aware that lying to an instructor in order to be able to make up a missed exam or in other ways to obtain a better grade can be treated as academic dishonesty. During exams, cell phones and PDAs must be stored away in a place not visible (e.g., inside a backpack).
• Regrade policy: regrade requests must be submitted in writing and within one week of the distribution of the graded material. Grade-database errors should also be pointed out within one week of posting.
• Final grades: Per university policy, changes to your final grade will be made only in the event of a clerical error. Asking your instructor how far you were from a cutoff and what extra work you can do to improve the grade is not appropriate.
• Switching/adding/dropping lab and lecture sections: all add, drop, and section changes of all lower division Computer Science courses, after the period when students can do so electronically is over, are done through the College of Engineering's Student Affairs office. Neither the instructors nor the CS department itself can sign any add/drop forms, nor can they arrange for section changes. Please go to Student Affairs, Bourns Hall A159, for any such changes.
• Communicating with the instructors and TAs: when sending electronic mail to the instructors or TAs, please remember that many students have the same name, and instructors/TAs may be involved in more than one course. So please use your full name, preferably including your student ID number, and be as specific as you can (list the course, section, etc. -- whatever is relevant to your communication). Also, please try to be professional and use reasonable grammar and formatting.
• Cell phones: During lectures and lab sessions, please turn off your cell phone.
• Time Requirements: This is a four-unit CS course. As such, you should expect to spend 3 hours/week in lecture, 3 hours/week in lab, and 6 to 10 hours/week doing individual study (readings, homeworks, programming, lab preparation, etc) -- no exaggerating here! Please don't underestimate the time you will need to spend on this course. These are real time amounts spent by successful past students. Computer Science and Engineering are challenging disciplines requiring extensive time to master -- it's worth it in the end (great jobs, great pay, respect, etc.), but those things don't come for free. So practice, practice, practice! Work hard in school, then reap the rewards of a great career.

Additional Resources

A short list of all commands covered so far can be found here.

Below are a list of recommended books for this class. The books marked with a * are available online for UCR students.

• *Unix Power Tools, 3rd edition, by Mike Loukides, Tim O'reilly, Jerry Peek, and Shelley Powers.
• *Perl in a Nutshell, by Nathan Patwardhan, Ellen Siever, and Stephen Spainhour.
• *Linux in a Nutshell, 4th Edition, by Stephen Figgins, Ellen Siever, and Aaron Weber.
• The Latex Companion, 2nd Edition, by Frank Mittelbach, Michel Goossens, Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, and Chris Rowley.
• The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition, by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.

© 2003 UC Riverside Department of Computer Science & Engineering. All rights reserved.