Article

Which pointer errors do students make?

Authors:

Bruce Adcock,

Paolo Bucci,

Wayne D. Heym,

Joseph E. Hollingsworth,

Timothy Long,

Bruce W. WeideAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '07: Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education

Pages 9 - 13

https://doi.org/10.1145/1227310.1227317

Published: 07 March 2007 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

A model and a taxonomy to characterize pointer manipulations are introduced, along with an instrumentation technology that leverages them to provide students with immediate reports of pointer errors in C++ programs. Data collected from CS2 student assignments show that the vast majority of student pointer errors either would not have been noticed at all, or would have been detected only much later in execution, if this infrastructure were not used. Possible applications of the underlying technology--both to conduct long-term educational research into students' understanding of pointers, and to improve pedagogy directly--are discussed.

References

[1]

Anderson, P., and Anderson, G. Navigating C++ and Object-Oriented Design. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, N.J.,1998.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

Austin, T.M., Breach, S.E., and Sohi, G.S. Efficient Detection of All Pointer and Array Access Errors. Proceedings SIGPLAN '94, ACM, 1994, 290--301.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

Cordy, J.A., Carmichael, I.H., and Halliday, R. The TXL Programming Language, Version 10.4. Viewed 6 Sept 2006 at http://www.txl.ca/docs/TXL104ProgLang.pdf.

Google Scholar

[4]

Kumar, A.N. A Reified Interface for a Tutor on Program Debugging. Proceedings Third IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, IEEE, 2003, 190--194.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[5]

Pike, S.M., Weide, B.W., and Hollingsworth, J.E. Checkmate: Cornering C++ Dynamic Memory Errors With Checked Pointers. Proceedings of the 31st SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, ACM Press, 2000, 352--356.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[6]

Postner, L., and Turns, J. Using Facet-Based Assessment to Understand Introductory Programming Students' Knowledge. Proceedings 32nd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, IEEE, 2002, T4G7-T4G11.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[7]

Stroustrup, B. The C++ Programming Language (3rd edition). Addison Wesley Longman, Reading, MA, 1997.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[8]

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP). Viewed 6 Sept 2006 at http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp.

Google Scholar

[9]

Van Scoy, F.L. The Reid List of the First Course Language for Computer Science Majors. Viewed 6 Sept 2006 at http://www.csee.wvu.edu~vanscoy/reid.htm.

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Brieven GBaum VDonnet B(2024)Tartare: Automatic Generation of C Pointer Statements and FeedbackProceedings of the 26th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3636243.3636264(192-201)Online publication date: 29-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636243.3636264
Jerkins JRawajfih YRay D(2023)Common C++ Pointer Misconceptions: Essence and TreatmentJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3636988.363700739:3(76-85)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3636988.3637007
Rong WXu TSun ZSun ZOuyang YXiong Z(2023)An Object Tuple Model for Understanding Pointer and Array in C LanguageIEEE Transactions on Education10.1109/TE.2023.323602766:4(318-329)Online publication date: Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TE.2023.3236027
Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Which pointer errors do students make?

A model and a taxonomy to characterize pointer manipulations are introduced, along with an instrumentation technology that leverages them to provide students with immediate reports of pointer errors in C++ programs. Data collected from CS2 student ...
Interprocedural pointer alias analysis

We present practical approximation methods for computing and representing interprocedural aliases for a program written in a language that includes pointers, reference parameters, and recursion. We present the following contributions: (1) a framework ...
Defective error/pointer interactions in the Linux kernel
ISSTA '11: Proceedings of the 2011 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis

Linux run-time errors are represented by integer values referred to as error codes. These values propagate across long function-call chains before being handled. As these error codes propagate, they are often temporarily or permanently encoded into ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

SIGCSE '07: Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education

March 2007

634 pages

ISBN:1595933611

DOI:10.1145/1227310

General Chairs:
Ingrid Russell
University of Hartford
,
Susan Haller
SUNY Potsdam
,
Program Chairs:
J. D. Dougherty
Haverford College
,
Susan Rodger
Duke University

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 39, Issue 1
March 2007
581 pages
ISSN:0097-8418
DOI:10.1145/1227504
Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 March 2007

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

SIGCSE07

Sponsor:

SIGCSE07: The 38th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 7 - 11, 2007

Kentucky, Covington, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

Upcoming Conference

SIGCSE TS 2025

Sponsor:
sigcse

The 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

February 26 - March 1, 2025

Pittsburgh , PA , USA

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

11
Total Citations
View Citations
503
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)17
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)8

Reflects downloads up to 17 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Brieven GBaum VDonnet B(2024)Tartare: Automatic Generation of C Pointer Statements and FeedbackProceedings of the 26th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3636243.3636264(192-201)Online publication date: 29-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636243.3636264
Jerkins JRawajfih YRay D(2023)Common C++ Pointer Misconceptions: Essence and TreatmentJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3636988.363700739:3(76-85)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3636988.3637007
Rong WXu TSun ZSun ZOuyang YXiong Z(2023)An Object Tuple Model for Understanding Pointer and Array in C LanguageIEEE Transactions on Education10.1109/TE.2023.323602766:4(318-329)Online publication date: Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TE.2023.3236027
Heinsen Egan MMcDonald C(2020)An evaluation of SeeC: a tool designed to assist novice C programmers with program understanding and debuggingComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2020.177703431:3(340-373)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2020.1777034
McGill MPollock IScharlau BMcDermott RPears ASabin M(2019)If Memory ServesProceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3304221.3325550(241-242)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3304221.3325550
McGill MJohnson CAtlas JBouchard DMessom CPollock IScott MSheard JKorhonen A(2018)If Memory ServesProceedings of the 2017 ITiCSE Conference on Working Group Reports10.1145/3174781.3174783(25-46)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3174781.3174783
Ihantola PVihavainen AAhadi AButler MBörstler JEdwards SIsohanni EKorhonen APetersen ARivers KRubio MSheard JSkupas BSpacco JSzabo CToll DRagonis NKinnunen P(2015)Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics in ProgrammingProceedings of the 2015 ITiCSE on Working Group Reports10.1145/2858796.2858798(41-63)Online publication date: 4-Jul-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2858796.2858798
Adam Basigie M(2022)THE IMPACT OF COMBINING FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS AND WORKED EXAMPLES IN PROGRAM VISUALIZATION TOOL ON IMPROVING STUDENTS’ HELD MENTAL MODELS OF POINTERS’ VALUE AND ADDRESS ASSIGNMENTEducation & Pedagogy Journal10.23951/2782-2575-2022-2-53-64(53-64)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.23951/2782-2575-2022-2-53-64
Craig MPetersen A(2016)Student difficulties with pointer concepts in CProceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference10.1145/2843043.2843348(1-10)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2843043.2843348
Cetin ISendurur ESendurur P(2014)Assessing the Impact of Meta-Cognitive Training on Students' Understanding of Introductory Programming ConceptsJournal of Educational Computing Research10.2190/EC.50.4.d50:4(507-524)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2014
https://doi.org/10.2190/EC.50.4.d
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Which pointer errors do students make?

Interprocedural pointer alias analysis

Defective error/pointer interactions in the Linux kernel