• Arrive early to the cluster for exams (15/20 minutes) to have time to setup your exam dev environment.

From the moment you are assigned a computer you can login right away with the credentials provided. Expect something like:

login : exam

password : exam

Point a terminal to your ~/ directory and add the following lines to your .zshrc, .gdbinit and .vimrc files.

If any of these files does not exist, create it. This should be the case for both .vimrc and .gdbinit.

• .zshrc

Add convenient aliases:

# Compile with warnings & debug symbols
alias ccw='cc -Wall -Wextra -Werror -g'

# Git
alias ga='git add'
alias gst='git status'
alias gc='git commit -m'

• .gdbinit

This line allows GDB to load a .gdbinit file from any working directory in the system.

set auto-load safe-path /

• .vimrc

A basic vim configuration, edit this to your liking.

syntax on
set mouse=a	" Enable mouse
set noswapfile	" Disable swap files

set ruler
set number
set relativenumber

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4

set autoindent
set smartindent

runtime! ftplugin/man.vim " Open man pages in Vim

• You can only log into examshell right on the starting time of the exam.

• Use your 42 student login and password credentials to get access to examshell.

• You will be assigned an exercise randomly at each level.

• You can only progress to Level 2 after you have completed Level 1, and so on.

• This is where the git aliases we defined in .zshrc come in. To validate each exercise, first you need to upload it to the vogsphere using git commands.

Tip

• Never use git add . (or the alias ga .) to avoid staging files that are not required by the subject. Always specify the name of the file/files you want to stage.

• Use and abuse git status (or the alias gst) to make sure you only commit files required by the subject.

• If you want to be extra cautious, setup a .gitignore at the root of the exam's submission directory, with contents similar to the following:

.gitignore
*/a.out
*/main.c
*/gdb.txt
*/.gdbinit

The Rank 2 Exam has four levels, comprised of several exercises each.

Tip

ft_isspace is a particularly helpful function when solving a lot of the exercises through every level of the exam.

Here follow the solutions to all exam exercises (as of January 2024), including all test code and .gdbinit files developed to test and study each exercise.

For Rank 3 Exam you will have to solve a "mini" ft_printf or get_next_line exercise.

Good luck with the exams!

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