Q#1: What is the purpose of swapping in the sorting process, and how is it achieved in the given programming example?
Answer: Swapping is used to rearrange elements in ascending order. In the example, a temporary variable stores the value at the first position. Then, the value at the sixteenth position is assigned to the first position, and the stored value is assigned to the sixteenth position, effectively swapping the two values.
Q#2: Explain the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy in the binary search algorithm. How does it contribute to the efficiency of the search?
Answer: The ‘divide and conquer’ strategy repeatedly divides the array into two halves, comparing the target value with the middle element and discarding one half based on the result. This process continues until the target is found. Efficiency arises because each step halves the search space, leading to logarithmic time complexity, which is much faster than linear search for large arrays.
Q#3: In C language, how is an array passed to a function, and why is it necessary to include the size of the array as a parameter?
Answer: When passing an array to a function, both its name and size are passed as parameters. The size is necessary because the called function does not inherently know the array’s length. Arrays in C are passed by reference, meaning the function receives the original array, not a copy, allowing the function to modify the original array elements.
Q#4: What is the default mechanism of passing values to a function in C, and how does it differ when passing arrays?
Answer: The default mechanism for passing simple variables is ‘call by value,’ where a copy of the variable is passed, leaving the original unchanged. For arrays, the default is ‘call by reference.’ The array’s name represents its starting memory address, so changes made in the function affect the original array.