CLE – C Certified Entry-Level Programmer Certification: Exam Syllabus

 

Exam block #1: Basic Concepts (13.25%)

Objectives covered by the block (4 exam items)

  • fundamental concepts: compilation and the compiler, IDE, language elements, lexis, syntax and semantics, C keywords, instructions, machine/natural/artificial languages, portability
  • literals: char; integer, floating-point, and double type numbers; scientific notations, strings
  • comments
  • the printf() and puts() functions
  • the return keyword
  • the main() function
  • numeral systems (binary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal)
  • basic operators:  * / % / + – =
  • variables
 

Exam block #2: Data Types, Evaluations, and Basic I/O Operations (13.25%)

Objectives covered by the block (4 exam items)

  • primary and derived data types, modifiers
  • type casting and conversions
  • declaring variables, assigning values to variables
  • defining constants,
  • accuracy of floating-point numbers
  • basic input and output operations using the scanf(), puts(), printf() functions
  • formatting output, format specifiers
  • type casting
  • header files
  • basic calculations
 

Exam block #3: Arithmetic, logical, and bitwise operators (13.25%)

Objectives covered by the block (4 exam items)

  • operators: unary and binary, priorities and binding
  • basic calculations
  • incrementation and decrementation operators
  • shortcut operators
  • rounding the numbers
  • bitwise shifts (>> and <<)
  • logical operations: and, or, not
  • the truth table
 

Exam block #4: Flow control: decision-making statements (13.25%)

Objectives covered by the block (4 exam items)

  • conditional statements: if, if-else, if-else if, if-else if-else
  • multiple conditional statements
  • nested conditions
  • switch and case
  • the default keyword
  • control instructions
 

Exam block #5: Flow control: loops (16.50%)

Objectives covered by the block (5 exam items)

  • building loops: while, for, do…while
  • iterating through sequences
  • infinite loops
  • loop elements, and loop execution
  • nesting loops
  • controlling loop execution: break, continue

 

Exam block #6: Arrays, pointers, and memory management (16.50%)

Objectives covered by the block (5 exam items)

  • creating and initializing arrays
  • indexing and manipulating arrays
  • sorting data in arrays
  • initiators
  • pointers, the NULL pointer, pointer arithmetic
  • addresses, references, dereferences, the sizeof operator
  • pointers vs. arrays
  • multidimensional arrays
  • arrays of pointers
  • the void type
  • memory allocation and deallocation: the malloc() and free() functions
 

Exam block #7: String manipulation (7%)

Objectives covered by the block (2 exam items)

  • character arrays, the ASCII code,
  • string initialization
  • string functions: strcpy, strlen, strcat
  • processing strings
  • string header files
 

Exam block #8: The Basics of Functions (7%)

Objectives covered by the block (2 exam items)

  • functions, parameters, definitions, declarations, invocations
  • creating user-defined functions
  • using selected C library functions

 

 

Last updated: December 9, 2019
Aligned with CLE-10-01