Scripting Languages

Assignment 2.1: Portfolio 1

ASSIGNMENT BRIEF

Important points before you begin:

•    Read this brief very carefully in full, and at the earliest opportunity.

•    If any of this brief’s stipulations are unclear to you, it is your responsibility to seek timely clarification from the lecturer/unit coordinator well before the assessment’s due date.

•    Be aware that if you misinterpret this assignment brief, either in part or in full, this misinterpretation will not be accepted as grounds for an appeal of the result you receive.

Overview

In this assignment you will be required to write a script. that demonstrates the extent to which you have understood the shell script (bash) commands, programmatic techniques and concepts addressed in Modules 1 to 5 inclusive. This assignment is worth 20% (20 marks) of your unit grade and its completion will help you  build a subset of the skills you will require to successfully complete Portfolio 2 and Assignment 3.

Your Academic Integrity Obligations

Your tutor, lecturer, and unit coordinator all take Academic Integrity very seriously and it cannot be stressed strongly enough how important it is that you fully understand your academic integrity obligations as a student of the University. In regard to all of this unit's assessments, all suspected instances of academic misconduct will be reported for investigation, which may result in substantial academic penalties for those concerned. If you are unfamiliar with the University's Academic Integrity Policy as it applies to all assignments you submit for this unit, you can familiarise yourself with it here. If you are unsure of anything, please contact the Unit Coordinator for clarification before submitting this assessment.

AI Tool Utilisation

Whereas AI tools can serve as a very useful tool in the software engineering workplace, they are not to be used to complete any of the assessments in this unit, either in-part or in totality. This is because the focus of this unit is the development of authentic knowledge of, and skill in applying, various scripting languages to achieve specific outcomes, and not the use of AI tools to act on a programmer's behalf. This acquisition of authentic knowledge extends beyond the outcomes of this unit and is important to a student’s future ability to be successful in obtaining a Work Integrated Learning placement, and ultimately, a job in industry.  Employers already use AI tools extensively and know what they can and cannot do – they see no value in hiring graduates whose demonstrable skills do not exceed that of existing AI tools. Additionally, where it,s suspected that a student is representing AI output as their own work-, they will be called upon to demonstrate functional knowledge of this work, which, if not forthcoming, may in turn lead to allegations of academic misconduct.

Please read the checklist below and watch theassociated videobefore submitting this assignment.

General Assignment Requirements

Your script. will be run/assessed in the Azure Linux VM provided at the beginning of semester. It is expected that you will develop and test your script in this Azure environment to ensure full compatibility.

Your script. must be a bash script. and nothing else, i.e. the shebang line used is #!/bin/bash. Scripts of any other type, e.g. #!/bin/sh will receive a grade of zero (0).

Ensure the script. you write is fully self-contained and is not configured to be dependent on external  files, libraries, or resources to run. Non-observance of this requirement may cause your script to run incorrectly or not at all.

Carefully check your submission before uploading it to Canvas. What you submit is what gets assessed! If you make a submission error, e.g. submit a wrong file, an empty .zip archive etc, no further/subsequent submissions will be accepted, which may result in a substantial loss of marks, or even a zero (0) result in some cases.

You must only submit a single shell script (.sh) file named filter.sh contained within a .zip file with the stipulated name in any individual upload action. Do not upload multiple files/zip archives in the  same upload action as all will be considered invalid and will not be assessed. Also note that only the most recent individual submission made (as determined by the timestamp Canvas allocates) will be  assessed.

If your script does not run for any reason, e.g. hard-coding of files/directories/paths, use of a development environment not compatible with the Azure Linux VM provided at the beginning of semester, only a partial mark may be awarded on a code-readthrough basis at the assessor’s discretion. Your assessor will not fix non-functional, dysfunctional, or incompatible scripts.

Task - Filter Records (20 marks)

Problem Description:

As you are considered the bash/shell script. guru in your department at a tech sales firm, you have been asked to create a command line tool that will allow salespeople to quickly generate summaries of smartphone stock as listed in large .csv files sent out to them from a stock management system on a regular basis. Mostly, sales staff want to be able to quickly determine stock available based on the amount of RAM and storage capacity in-stock devices are equipped with. Presently, it is taking staff a very long time to scroll through these large .csv listings to identify those devices that are equipped with the RAM and storage capacity they’re interested in.

Source File Example:

Important Points:

•    The tool (script) you develop will be used by sales staff on the command line of their Linux workstations as this is the environment they spend most of their time in.

•    Your script. will be used throughout the organisation by many sales staff of varying skill and experience, so robust user input validation and informative user messaging are essential.

•    Your script may well become someone else’s responsibility to manage and extend upon in the future, therefore it must be properly and accurately documented to allow for this without any input from you as the original developer.

•    The script must adhere to the organisation’s coding guidelines (as addressed in the relevant lectures).

•    Assume that the script. will always be run in the same directory as the source .csv file the salesperson is using.

Required Script Functionality

When your script is run, the user is to provide the required input data as command line arguments only. The user is not to be prompted for input at any point in the script’s execution.

The arguments provided by the user on the command line are to be fully validated before the script’s main logic is allowed to execute. If any of the input arguments are invalid, the user is to be accurately informed of what the error is and how to correct it when they next attempt to run the script. The script must always terminate with an appropriate error code when an error is encountered.

If all inputs pass the script’s validation procedures, the script is to then provide filtered results structured and formatted precisely as shown in the example screenshot below.

•    Perhaps needless to say, the results must be fully correct and complete in the context of the command line arguments provided.

Other Compulsory Requirements

Call the script. filter.sh.

Your full name and student number must be placed at the top of your script (as comments) immediately after the shebang line.

You may only use commands, utilities and programmatic techniques addressed in Lectures 1-5

inclusive with the exception of awk, sed and functions. Awk, sed and functions are not to be used until the Portfolio 2 assignment onwards.

Do not use bash/shell script. commands, utilities and programmatic techniques not addressed in

Lectures 1-5 inclusive or excluded above as this will result in a substantially lower mark being awarded (see rubric for details).

Your script. must be properly documented, accurately explaining all of the code elements it contains in your own words. Note: Documentation (comments) that is not relevant and accurate in regard to the code they describe, or a complete lack of documentation, will not only attract a lower mark, but may be viewed as suggestive of possible academic misconduct.

AI-generated documentation (comments) will receive a mark of zero (0) in this section of the rubric

Any temporary files and/or folders created by your script in the course of its execution must be programmatically removed from the assessor’s system when the script terminates.

The efficiency and correctness with which the commands, utilities and programmatic techniques  within your script have been utilised will also form part of your mark, so please pay close attention to this aspect of your code as well.

For example, your filter.sh script is expected to make use of appropriately selected and correctly applied commands/options from Lectures 1-5 inclusive (except those specifically excluded above). The total lines-of-code your script employs will also be considered, with deductions applicable should this significantly exceed the total deemed necessary to achieve the stipulated outcomes.

To assist you in the development and testing of your script, you have been provided with a file named source.csv. Examine this file carefully. Important Note: Your assessor will assess your script. using a .csv file that has precisely the same structure as source.csv, but that will contain values taken from an entirely different section of the master data set from which those in source.csv were drawn. The assessor’s .csv file will also not be named source.csv, but rather, something else. Hence, do not   hard code the file’s values or name into your script.