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