CSC 148H: Rules for assignments

In this course, you will be submitting most of your assignments electronically (except assingment 1). We do a lot of automated testing, as well as having TAs do human marking. In order to judge your work fairly and yet efficiently, we require you to follow the rules described here. Please read them carefully.

We apologize for having to be so strict, but re-marking takes a huge amount of time per assignment -- and with so many students, it becomes intractable.

Campus by campus

The mechanics of assignment submission almost certainly will be different on different campuses. Make sure you read your campus's web page on this topic.

The basic rules are common to all campuses, however, and here we discuss those basics.

The most important rules

If you violate any of the following rules then you may get a zero on some or all parts of the assignment, WITH NO APPEAL ALLOWED. (Please notice that you have to go out of your way to violate them!)

1. Put only one public class in each .java file.

2. Submit your .java files (the source code), not your .class files. Do NOT rename your .class file to make the electronic submission work.

3. Don't ever use package statements, even if your favourite IDE inserts them automatically. Delete them if they appear.

4. Capitalization matters in Java, including in filenames. This means that class names must match the filenames exactly. For example, if your class is called AssignmentZero, your file must be called AssignmentZero.java, and not assignmentzero.java or Assignmentzero.java. Use the capitalization asked for in the handout and starter code.

5. Sometimes we will ask you to submit written answers to questions. Any submissions must be plain text only. You can easily ensure this by typing your answers in DrJava, or some other text editor such as Notepad.

   These files MUST NOT be in Microsoft Word format, because we can't guarantee that all markers will have a copy of Word available. Please make sure your files are in text-only format.

6. When an assignment specifies output, the output of your code must follow the specification precisely. This includes using exactly the capitalization, number of spaces, punctuation and line breaks specified. And you must not add anything extra to the output. Your program may be marked automatically (by another program!) and any output which isn't exactly as specified will receive a zero.

Some tips on how the system works

1. If you resubmit a file, that is the only copy we will have. Your old submission will be overwritten, including the timestamp.

2. It's okay to submit extra files. We will ignore all files that we didn't ask for (except that you may sometimes write extra classes, and if these are needed by required files, we will notice and use them).

3. There may be marks given for a program that compiles, but does not produce correct results. Thus, it is always in your best interest to turn in something that compiles.

4. It is possible that these rules will be overridden for particular assignments. Any such changes will be announced in class or on the web site.