Electronic Handin: Students
NOTE: If you have used the electronic handin system before summer
1997, please note that
the command line has CHANGED! See the bottom of this document for more
information.
Introduction
Electronic handin is a way of submitting your CS assignments without having
to print them out. You will generally receive your grades via e-mail. This
page will document how to turn in your assignments electronically.
Your instructor will give you the name of the class account. For the
examples on this page, I'll assume this name is "cs200". When you actually
run the commands, use the name that the instructor gave to you.
Each assignment will be given an assignment number by your instructor. Make
sure you know this information before trying to hand something in.
First, a simple handin session. If you want to handin a file called
assign5.c for assignment 5, you would type:
~cs200/bin/handin 5 assign5.c
You will then receive some messages on-screen telling you that the
assignment has been handed in.
As you create more complex projects, you may need to hand in more than one
file. This is easy also. For example, you could type:
~cs200/bin/handin 5 assign5.c interface.c Makefile
This would hand in three files: assign5.c, interface.c, and Makefile. You
will receive confirmation that the files have been handed in.
The due date
Your instructor will assign a due date for each assignment. After the due
date, you may continue to hand in files, but they will be tagged as late and
you may lose points in accordance with class policy.
There will also be a cutoff date for each assignment. After the cutoff
date, NO files for that assignment will be accepted.
Common Questions
- Can I hand in a file more than once?
Yes. If you try to hand in a file multiple times, the handin program
will detect this. You will be asked if you would like to replace the
file that you handed in earlier. If you say yes, your new file will
replace the older one.
- What happens if I hand in a file before the due date and again after
the due date?
This will depend upon your instructor's policy.
- How do I know my files were actually handed in?
The handin program will display on your screen a message indicating
that each file was successfully handed in. If something went wrong,
you will be notified.
Possible Problems
Warning messages (messages that do not cause handin to exit) will always be
identified by the text "!!!" at the start of a line. Error messages
(problems that cause handin to terminate) will always be enclosed between
two horizontal "error" lines. This makes it easy to spot problems.
Below are some mistakes you might make when dealing with handin:
- I got a message saying it couldn't open one of my files.
You probably misspelled the filename or are in the wrong directory.
- handin complained about not having a valid assignment number.
Make sure you specified a valid assignment number. If you did, your
instructor may not have set up the handin program for that assignment;
ask your instructor or grader to configure handin for that assignment.
- One of my files was rejected. Why?
You may not handin files containing certain strange characters (such
as slashes, etc.) You also may not handin directories.
Advanced users
There are some other things you can do with handin. If you want to make a
script or Makefile target to automatically hand things in, you might want to
tell handin to always accept replacement files without prompting. To do so,
ad a -y to the command line before the assignment number. For example:
~cs200/bin/handin -y 1 myprogram.c
Differences from the previous handin program
The main difference is that you no longer have to specify the class name
twice. Other differences include:
- You may now handin assignments from either Linux or Sun.
- You will be able to handin files containing dashes.
- There is now a distinction between the duedate and the cutoff date.
- It is not strictly necessary to use vt100 terminal emulation, though it
is still reccommended.
- There is a new -y switch.
- More information on-screen
John Goerzen [e-mail]
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