Description
Complete each of the tasks below. For all steps involving the use of LINUX/UNIX commands, place the
command you used along with the resulting output (i.e. copy-and-paste from your terminal window) in a
file called lab12.txt. However, do not include extraneous or superfluous commands or output; only include
content relevant and essential to the specified task. Then, with a text editor, add to lab12.txt identifying
information to clearly distinguish which commands/output correspond to each task/question. When done,
hand in lab12.txt, as well as your files population.awk and country_data_birthrate.txt, through the
moodle page for the lab. Use the tuxworld servers for completing the lab. This lab is out of a total of
18 marks; the number of marks allocated to each question is indicated below. Marks may be docked for
extraneous, irrelevant, or superfluous content or for not following directions. Your submission is due at 11:55
p.m. on Thursday, December 8.
Note that this lab exercise description is three pages in length.
1. A file called country_data.txt is provided as supplementary data for this question. It consists of four
columns: country name, population (in thousands), annual births (in thousands), and literacy rate
(%). Before you start the tasks below, familiarize yourself with the contents of the file by examining its
content with a program like more(1) or less(1). You do not need to show a log of this in lab12.txt.
(a) (2 marks) Like some data files you may encounter, country_data.txt is not formatted consistently—while most rows contain columns delimited by tabs, a few have one or more columns
delimited by spaces. To verify this, use cut(1) to output only the third column (field), and
redirect the output to cutout.txt. When you do this, do not change the default delimiter, which
is a tab character. Then use awk(1) to output only the third column (field), redirecting the output
to awkout.txt. Again, do not change the default delimiter, which in this case is one or more
whitespace characters. Finally, use diff(1) to compare cutout.txt and awkout.txt. Submit a
log of these steps. You do not need to submit awkout.txt or cutout.txt.
(b) (3 marks) Write an awk(1) command to “clean up” country_data.txt. In other words, make it
consistent that a single tab character, and only that, is used to delimit columns (fields) in the file.
You will need to read in the file using awk(1), then re-output all of the fields such that they are
delimited only by single tabs. Place the output in a file called country_data_cleaned.txt. Your
awk(1) script must be specified on the command line, rather than in a separate file. Then repeat
question 1a with country_data_cleaned.txt to verify that the output of cut(1) and awk(1)
are now identical when outputting the third column.
Use country_data_cleaned.txt to answer questions 1c, 1d, and 1e.
You do not need to submit country_data_cleaned.txt.
(c) (2 marks) Write an awk(1) command that lists all the countries having a literacy rate less than
50%. Your command must output only the countries, not the other information in the table.
Countries having an unknown literacy rate (represented by the “-” character) must not be included
in your output. Your awk(1) code must be specified on the command line, rather than in a separate
script.
Remember to use country_data_cleaned.txt as your input file.
1
(d) (2 marks) Write an awk(1) command that prints the total population (in thousands) of all of the
countries whose names begin with “A” and end with “a”. Your awk(1) code must be placed in
a script called population.awk, and then invoked using “awk -f” on the command line. Upload
population.awk as part of your lab submission.
Note that this question does not ask for the population (total or otherwise) for each country whose
name matches the pattern. Rather the awk(1) command is determine the sum (the total) across
all the countries whose names match the pattern.
Remember to use country_data_cleaned.txt as your input file.
Hint: the anchors ‘^’ and ‘$’, if used in a regular expression matching against a field, mean
“beginning of the field” and “end of the field”, respectively.
(e) (2 marks) Write an awk(1) command that reads country_data_cleaned.txt, and outputs the
same information except with an additional column. This fifth column contains the country’s birth
rate (number of children per woman per year). Assume the population of each country is 50%
male and 50% female. You may use the default output format for decimal numbers (7 decimal
places). Like the other columns, the additional column must be delimited by a tab character.
Your awk(1) code must be specified on the command line, rather than in a separate file, and the
output of the command must be redirected to a file country_data_birthrate.txt. Upload your
country_data_birthrate.txt file as part of your lab submission.
2. (2 marks) Use a pipeline involving date(1) and awk(1) to print out the current month and year in
the following format:
Month: Nov
Year: 2011
Your awk(1) code must be specified on the command line, rather than in a separate script.
3. Consider the n-queens example from class where the source code for the program had been distributed
among a number of source files. In that organization of the source code, queens.cc contained a
short main program, functions related to finding a solution were in file solver.cc, and functions
manipulating the game state were in state.cc. Appropriate interface information was placed in
solver.h and state.h.
For the purposes of this lab exercise, the functions in state.cc and solver.h have been placed in
a library libqueens on the tuxworld machines. The library can be found in /student/214/lib. The
header files solver.h and state.h have been placed in /student/214/include.
Associated with this lab is a modified version of queens.cc from the aforementioned in-class example.
The modification is that the lines
#include “state.h”
#include “solver.h”
have been replaced by
#include
#include
That is, this version of queens.cc assumes that solver.h and state.h are “system include files”.
Download this queens.cc file, and use it as the source file in the remainder of this question. You do
not need to show a log of the download in lab12.txt.
(a) (1 mark) Compile the downloaded queens.cc to queens.o, specifying that the compiler is to
search /student/214/include for “system include files” (along with the other, default directories
that it will search).
2
(b) (1 mark) Using g++, link and load queens.o to produce a dynamically linked executable file
queens. Specify that the library queens for this lab is to be searched as part of the linking
process. Also specify that in addition to the usual places that ld looks for libraries, it is also to
search the directory /student/214/lib.
(c) (1 mark) Invoke your queens program from step 3b using the command “./queens”. The program
should result in an error
./queens: error while loading shared libraries: libqueens.so:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Fix the error by adding /student/214/lib to the setting of the environment variable
LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your shell. Demonstrate that the queens program now works by finding a
solution for N = 4.
(d) (2 marks) Using file(1) confirm that queens is a dynamically linked program. Then using
ldd(1) examine the shared libraries that queens will make use of. Find in the output from
ldd(1) the name of the file containing the queens shared library. Record that name in your
lab12.txt file.
If you are up to a challenge and would like to take on some non-credit bonus lab questions, please contact
the instructor.
And now you’re done with the last lab in Cmpt214!
3