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[[Category: GATE2013]]
 
[[Category: GATE2013]]
[[Category: Programming Languages questions]]
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[[Category: Programming Languages questions from GATE]]
 
[[Category:Coding Questions]]
 
[[Category:Coding Questions]]

Latest revision as of 12:02, 15 July 2014

What is the return value of f(p,p), if the value of p is initialized to 5 before the call? Note that the first parameter is passed by reference, whereas the second parameter is passed by value.

<syntaxhighlight lang="c">

int f (int &x, int c) {

c = c - 1; 
if (c==0) return 1; 
x = x + 1; 
return f(x,c) * x; 

} </syntaxhighlight >

(A) 3024

(B) 6561

(C) 55440

(D) 161051

Solution

In GATE 2013 marks were given to all as the same code in C/C++ produces undefined behavior. This is because * is not a sequence point in C/C++. The correct code must replace

return f(x,c) * x; 

with

res = f(x,c);
return res * x;

In this code, there will be 4 recursive calls with parameters (6,4), (7,3), (8,2) and (9,1). The last call returns 1. But due to pass by reference, x in all the previous functions is now 9. Hence, the value returned by f(p,p) will be 9 * 9 * 9 * 9 * 1 = 6561.




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What is the return value of f(p,p), if the value of p is initialized to 5 before the call? Note that the first parameter is passed by reference, whereas the second parameter is passed by value.

<syntaxhighlight lang="c">

int f (int &x, int c) {

c = c - 1; 
if (c==0) return 1; 
x = x + 1; 
return f(x,c) * x; 

} </syntaxhighlight >

(A) 3024

(B) 6561

(C) 55440

(D) 161051

Solution[edit]

In GATE 2013 marks were given to all as the same code in C/C++ produces undefined behavior. This is because * is not a sequence point in C/C++. The correct code must replace

return f(x,c) * x; 

with

res = f(x,c);
return res * x;

In this code, there will be 4 recursive calls with parameters (6,4), (7,3), (8,2) and (9,1). The last call returns 1. But due to pass by reference, x in all the previous functions is now 9. Hence, the value returned by f(p,p) will be 9 * 9 * 9 * 9 * 1 = 6561.




blog comments powered by Disqus