The courses I TA

Steve Matuszek's TA Page
CMSC 491B/691B | CMSC 491C/691C

For the Spring 1999 semester, I will be a TA for CMSC 491B/691B (Creating Web Services) and 491C/691C (Scripting Languages).

I will usually be attending B. I wish I could attend C, but I have 611 then.

I have settled on tentative office hours. I'm thinking 4:00-6:00 pm on Monday, and 1:30-3:30 pm on Wednesday. These can still change to accommodate you; if I get a lot of requests to meet at another time I may move my hours to then.

I have class all day Tuesday and Thursday, but I am pretty much here all week from mid-Monday to mid-Friday. So you can contact me at any time and we can settle on a day, time and place to meet.

So where is my office? I don't really have one. So during those hours I will be working out of Greg Long's office, ECS 225L. The number there is x 3099. Other times, I may be in the Graphics Lab (x 6339), but the other people who work there aren't my secretaries and don't want to take messages. ;-)

That's why the best way to reach me is always e-mail, wyvern@cs.umbc.edu. If I'm at work, I'm online. If I'm at home, I'm probably also online (cable modem).

CMSC 491B/691B (Creating Web Services)

Here is the 491B/691B page.

News [May 7]: I have posted the fourth project.

News [Apr 29]: I have posted the third project.

News [Apr 13]: I have posted the second project.

News [Mar 13]: I have posted the notes on PKI and security. These are simply HTML versions of Mr. Copeland's PowerPoint slides. They are

News [older] and textbook info

CMSC 491C/691C (Scripting Languages)

Here is the 491C/691C page.

News [Apr 20]: Project 3 was graded and returned to you some time ago. Sorry I forgot to post my comments here about it. The main one was that I originally took off points for files that the shell could not execute -- i.e. the first line was #!\usr\bin\perl or something like that.

The reason I took off points is that a program that cannot execute is naturally suspicious in terms of whether it was written or simply copied. The reason I gave them back is that I realized this could work differently under different shells.

News [Mar 17]: I've posted some information on the grading breakdown for the first assignment. I hope this clarifies for you why you got the grade you did. I am open to suggestions, and to appeals as to whether your submission meets a given requirement, but not as to how many points were lost if it does not, as this is a constant for everybody.

News [Mar 14]: Assignment 1 has been graded and your scores have been sent to you at your gl accounts.

The programs were excellent overall. Any questions can be directed to me. The most common problems were:

In sorter, forgetting to use -n to sort numerically rather than alphabetically. Remember, alphabetically, 10 comes before 2.
In adder and adder2, not handling a lot of non-integer arguments. Rather than trying to think of all possible bad arguments, it makes more sense to check whether an argument is logically NOT a good argument. For example:
```
        case $number
        in
                *[!0-9]*) ;; 
                *) sum=`expr $sum + $number`;; 
        esac
```

News [Feb 12]: The first couple of assignments have been posted. I am available to help you with them, but remember that I am seeing some of this material for the first time myself. So the first few people I help with any given assignment will probably have to bear with me a little.

Steve Matuszek, March 14, 1999