Exam Syllabus

PCEP – Certified Entry-Level Python Programmer Certification: Exam Syllabus

Exam block #1: Basic Concepts (17%)

Objectives covered by the block (5 exam items)

fundamental concepts: interpreting and the interpreter, compilation and the compiler, language elements, lexis, syntax and semantics, Python keywords, instructions, indenting literals: Boolean, integer, floating-point numbers, scientific notation, strings comments the print() function the input() function numeral systems (binary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal) numeric operators: ** * / % // + – string operators: * + assignments and shortcut operators

Exam block #2: Data Types, Evaluations, and Basic I/O Operations (20%)

Objectives covered by the block (6 exam items)

operators: unary and binary, priorities and binding bitwise operators: ~ & ^ | << >> Boolean operators: not and or Boolean expressions relational operators ( == != > >= < <= ), building complex Boolean expressions accuracy of floating-point numbers basic input and output operations using the input(), print(), int(), float(), str(), len() functions formatting print() output with end= and sep= arguments type casting basic calculations simple strings: constructing, assigning, indexing, immutability

Exam block #3: Control Flow – loops and conditional blocks (20%)

Objectives covered by the block (6 exam items)

conditional statements: if, if-else, if-elif, if-elif-else multiple conditional statements the pass instruction building loops: while, for, range(), in iterating through sequences expanding loops: while-else, for-else nesting loops and conditional statements controlling loop execution: break, continue

Exam block #4: Data Collections – Lists, Tuples, and Dictionaries (23%)

Objectives covered by the block (7 exam items)

simple lists: constructing vectors, indexing and slicing, the len() function lists in detail: indexing, slicing, basic methods (append(), insert(), index()) and functions (len(), sorted(), etc.), del instruction, iterating lists with the for loop, initializing, in and not in operators, list comprehension, copying and cloning lists in lists: matrices and cubes tuples: indexing, slicing, building, immutability tuples vs. lists: similarities and differences, lists inside tuples and tuples inside lists dictionaries: building, indexing, adding and removing keys, iterating through dictionaries as well as their keys and values, checking key existence, keys(), items() and values() methods strings in detail: escaping using the \ character, quotes and apostrophes inside strings, multi-line strings, basic string functions.

Exam block #5: Functions (20%)

Objectives covered by the block (6 exam items)

defining and invoking your own functions and generators return and yield keywords, returning results, the None keyword, recursion parameters vs. arguments, positional keyword and mixed argument passing, default parameter values converting generator objects into lists using the list() function name scopes, name hiding (shadowing), the global keyword