adding fall2026/unix/eoce/

+# UNIX FALL2026 EOCE

+

+The End of Course Experience (eoce) satisfies the fourth discrete grading

+component of the course. It is meant to evaluate your knowledge and

+understanding gained through the semester.

+

+Unlike the regular weekly projects, the purpose of which is to promote a

+learning and understanding of the concepts of the course, this EoCE is

+meant more as a demonstration of your proficiency in understanding and

+utilizing the concepts and skills obtained, showing me how productive you

+can be with the experiences gained.

+

+## RULES

+

+Presented within will be various activities evaluating your knowledge and

+experience gained this semester. In places where you are able, the more

+you write (ie comment) and explain topics the better the chance you will

+have of receiving full credit (and alternatively, the more credit you

+will receive should something defer correctness).

+

+Unless otherwise specified, the components on this experience are open

+resource with the exception of other individuals. In that respect, it

+is **CLOSED PERSON**. This means you are not to communicate with

+other people (either in the class or otherwise), in real life or

+electronically. Use your own knowledge, use your own skills, and use your

+own ability to access the allowed resources to aid you in coming up with

+your well thought out responses to each activity.

+

+You are allowed, and expected, to seek clarification on any activity by

+asking me. But the aim here is to evaluate what you have learned, so do

+not expect tutoring. Any help should be prompted by a well-asked

+question. The better and more informed your questions, the better my

+responses MAY be. In many ways, I designed this EoCE premised on each and

+every one of you interacting with me through the asking of informed

+questions. Those that do not take advantage of asking such calibre of

+questions and instead end up struggling, please know that you're doing

+this wrong. But also know that, the aim here is for you to accomplish the

+various tasks through your own understanding of the task and concepts at

+hand, and not to outsource your thinking and remembering to others.

+

+You are to all of the available items. Submission is to be as a submitted

+archive to the usual and appropriate places: the 'pctF' project submitted

+via its usual process, the other items will be part of the `eoce` project

+that you would have `grabit`ed.

+

+To maximize any credit received (or to minimize points lost), optimize

+your submission for an organized and easy-to-read presentation of

+information that conforms with each section's stated guidelines. In the

+case of programs or scripts written, ensure that you are following proper

+and consistent commenting/documentation and indentation practices. Use

+well-named variables (at least 4 symbols long), and be mindful of how

+your particular files submitted will appear on a reasonably-sized

+terminal (most of my terminals are 80-90 characters wide), should that be

+the contextually relevant destination of output.

+

+The EoCE is worth 26 points of your overall grade (projects (52) +

+participation (13) + notes (13) + eoce (26) = 104), representing a

+distinct fourth category within the grading policy of the course

+(Projects, Journal, Participation, and EoCE).

+

+### FINALS WEEK AVAILABILITY

+

+While some classes are allocated a specific meeting time during finals

+week, I make all such times available should you be free and have

+questions. As such, finals week in **CHM123** will look something like

+this:

+

+ * Thursday, December 10th, 2026 from 08:00AM-11:00AM

+ * Thursday, December 10th, 2026 from 02:30PM-05:30PM

+ * Friday, December 11th, 2026 from 02:30PM-05:30PM

+ * Tuesday, December 15th, 2026 from 11:15AM-02:15PM

+

+Do note, the discord remains available for questions, and there is no

+need for you to be physically present at a given time during finals week.

+These are merely resources available to you should you wish to utilize

+them in the appropriate manners they are available to be used.

+

+## GRABIT

+

+There is a **grabit** available for the EoCE. It would house the code for

+the various programming sections. The letter division is transacted via

+its own `pctF` project.

+

+## CONTENT

+

+### CALENDAR SCRIPT

+

+Your task here is to implement a bash script solution of a real life

+process: the mental math trick of determining what day of the week

+January 1 of any given year (in the 21st century) falls on.

+

+You may safely assume that all requests will be for days in the 21st

+century (2000-2099)

+

+#### Background

+

+Mental Math constitutes an intersection of mental tricks and math-

+instead of utilizing a purely math-only solution, textual manipulations

+or simplifications in the computational process may take place enabling

+an individual to, once having learned the process, solve such problems in

+their head, and typically without the use of a calculating device.

+

+The process in this case is one of simple (reduced) multiplication and

+mapping against a table. To wit:

+

+#### Day values

+

+For this trick to work, we need to be familiar with the following table

+(a map of days to numeric values):

+

+|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|

+| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |

+|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|

+| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

+|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|

+

+NOTE: Depending on how you implement your algorithm, you may find your

+approach prefers 7s OR 0s for your Sunday value... you aren't going to be

+encountering them at random. Once you work through your approach, you

+will discover which one you end up with.

+

+#### Calculating day of the week based on year

+

+Okay, time for the magic:

+

+Let us try it on January 1st, 2014.

+

+#### Step 1: Obtain last two digits of the year

+

+In our example, we're working with 2014, the last two digits are

+therefore: 14

+

+You should be able to come up with a means of extracting this information

+in your program.

+

+NOTE: You are to input the 4-digit year as input into your bash script.

+

+#### Step 2: Compute 25% (drop the decimal)

+

+Even this is something we can do in our heads. I can think of two

+approaches right off the bat:

+

+#### Approach 1: 10 + 10 + 5

+

+10% percent of anything is merely moving the decimal over one place to

+the left. 10% of 54 is 5.4

+

+For our 2014 example, 10% of 14 is therefore 1.4

+

+So we need two 10 percents... 1.4 + 1.4 = 2.8

+

+Finally, 5% is half of 10% (half of 1.4 is 0.7), so 1.4 + 1.4 + 0.7 = 3.5

+

+But, since we do not care about the decimal at this end point, we drop it

+and are left with just 3.

+

+#### Approach 2: half of half

+

+25% is a convenient value for us with respect to 100, allowing this

+optimized approach to work.

+

+ * Half of 100 is 50 (50%)

+ * Half of 50 is 25 (25%) -- hence the "half of a half"

+

+So, 14 cut in half is 7.

+

+7 cut in half is 3.5.

+

+Once again, dropping the decimal yields 3.

+

+#### Step 3: Add 25% to year value

+

+Once we have our 25% value, go and add it back to our two-digit year

+value:

+

+```

+ 14 + 3 = 17

+```

+

+#### Step 4: Subtract the largest fitting multiple of 7

+

+Why multiple of 7? Seven days in a week.

+

+Some multiples of 7:

+

+|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

+| 0 | 7 | 14 | 21 | 28 | 35 | 42 | 49 |

+|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

+

+So, with a value of 17, what is the largest multiple of 7 that is still

+less than (or equal to) 17?

+

+Hopefully you identified the 14 as the likely candidate.

+

+```

+ 17 - 14 = 3

+```

+

+#### Step 5: Look up day in table

+

+We ended up with a 3 as the result for January 1st, 2014.

+

+Go and reference the 3 from that table... what day do we get? Does it

+match the actual day of the week for January 1st, 2014? We can verify it

+with the cal command:

+

+```

+ $ cal 01 2014

+ January 2014

+ Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa

+ 1 2 3 4

+ 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

+ 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

+ 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

+ 26 27 28 29 30 31

+

+ lab46:~$

+```

+

+Pretty neat, eh?

+

+#### Exception: Leap Years

+

+In the event of a leap year, we simply subtract 1 from the 25% value, and

+continue on as usual.

+

+Makes sense, right? Leap years add a day, so something ends up being "off

+by one".

+

+#### Script

+

+It is your task to write a bash script that will use the above method to

+determine the day of the week any given January 1st in the 21st century

+falls on.

+

+Your script should:

+ * prompt the user for the four digit year (input)

+ * perform the task (process)

+ * display the final value (output)

+

+#### Execution

+

+Here is a sample run of the script:

+

+```

+ Which year: 2014

+ January 1st, 2014 falls on: Wednesday

+```

+

+The execution of the script is short and simple- obtain the input, do the

+processing, produce the output, and then terminate.

+

+#### Output Specifications

+

+Your program must output as follows:

+

+ * Input prompts, and everything else except the actual day of the week

+ should be output to STDERR

+

+ * The calculated, fully-spelled-out day of the week (and only the day

+ name) needs to be displayed to STDOUT

+

+ * The output MUST contain the "January 1st, YEAR" string

+ * YEAR must be all 4 digits, exactly as input by the user

+

+ * The calculated day of the week must be fully spelled out and correct,

+ with the first letter capitalized, remaining letters lowercase.

+

+#### Verification

+

+One of the tests I will perform for output compliance of your code will

+involve comparing your script's output against a range of input values,

+to see if they all output in conformance with project specifications.

+

+You can check your results by typing in the following at the prompt:

+

+```

+ $ ./verify

+```

+

+If all aligns, you will see a lack of error messages output to the

+screen. However, if your output or formatting is off by even one byte,

+you will see a "MISMATCH".

+

+The resultant script MUST be well-organized, easy-to-read, consistently

+indented visually showing the encapsulated levels of logic, and be

+thoroughly commented to explain each significant step of the process.

+

+### REVERSE ENGINEER AND DOCUMENT A SCRIPT

+

+Reference and modify the files in the `revE/` directory.

+

+Here you will find a script, stripping of proper formatting and comments;

+it performs a task that you must figure out and document (in the form of

+comments), as you also restore proper indentation.

+

+Note that the files in their current form, while they perform an

+operation, are not in the proper form needed for submission (namely,

+laying out in an organized, easy-to-read, consistently indented, and

+well-commented fashion; that is something you may need to figure out).

+

+What is going on here? Both on a global (what functionality the script,

+when properly invoked, provides) and also more local (what are particular

+operations within the script doing to aid in performing the overall

+process).

+

+In your finished, submitted product, no line in the script should span

+longer than 90 characters. This includes both script logic and your

+comments.

+

+ * with the exception of "then" and "do" statements, no other commands

+ can be separated by semi-colons

+

+ * if there are any naming manipulations needed on the script, create

+ them as symbolic links against the main script.

+

+ * submit with the rest of the `eoce`, by running "make submit" in the

+ base directory.

+

+The resultant script MUST be well-organized, easy-to-read, consistently

+indented visually showing the encapsulated levels of logic, and be

+thoroughly commented to explain each significant step of the process.

+

+### PCTF

+

+Your task here is a familiar one: a letter division, just as we've

+encountered all semester. Only, this one is of the solve4 variety (ie not

+only do you have to solve for the key and provide a written step-by-step

+solution, but you also have to solve for the quotient and the remainder).

+

+Additionally, the puzzle difficulty has been increased to 'hard', which

+should provide more of a challenge than the 'medium'-rated puzzles you've

+had prior.

+

+Be sure to submit the appropriately-named and formatted files persuant to

+stated pctX project specifications (especially where a solve4-category

+puzzle is concerned).

+

+## SUBMISSION

+

+The DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION of this EoCE is 11:59:59pm EDT (that's

+23:59:59 in 24-hour time) Tuesday, December 15th, 2026. This is the

+ultimate deadline for any and all coursework. There is no "late", only

+"too late". Don't be that person, not with this.

+

+I would highly recommend not waiting until the last moment (or even the

+last week) to start on this. It has been released weeks in advance, with

+the intention that you chip away at it a little bit at a time, over the

+course of weeks.

+

+As with the projects and other deliverables this semester, you can submit

+early (and worthwhile, early submissions or extra work can receive up to

+7 bonus points (applicable to the EoCE grading component)), and also

+submit as many times as you desire. Note that when you submit, that

+resets the timestamp from which I will evaluate any early submission

+bonus points or on-time eligibility.

+

+Eligibility of any received bonus points on the EoCE are ultimately up to

+my decision: if you have genuinely put forth just and honest effort that

+is worthy of this undertaking, you will likely receive any eligible bonus

+points as described. If you are more calculating and avoiding of work in

+your EoCE efforts, I reserve the right not to grant any bonus points.

+

+Also, if I notice any cases of rule violations (people overhelping each

+other instead of letting each individual complete the EoCE on their own

+accord and ability), you risk forfeiting any/all bonus points or even any

+credit for the section(s) that you violated the rules on.

+

+Additionally:

+

+ * Solutions not abiding by spirit of project will be subject to a 50%

+ overall deduction

+ * Solutions not utilizing descriptive why and how comments will be

+ subject to a 50% overall deduction

+ * Solutions not utilizing indentation to promote scope and clarity will

+ be subject to a 50% overall deduction

+ * Solutions not organized and easy to read are subject to a 50% overall

+ deduction

+

+Good luck!