This is a practice test generator to prepare for A01, your first assessment at App Academy. This repo is forked from Mallory Bulkley, an App Academy alum who created this when she was a student. The purpose of this tool is to allow you to get comfortable with the types of problems that could pop up on an assessment. Note that the purpose is NOT TO MEMORIZE SOLUTIONS - the problems included in this generator are not an exhaustive list of what could show up on the assessment. Choosing to memorize solutions without understanding them may get you by in the short-term, but will never be worth it in the long run. Practice thinking and struggling through these problems so that you are agile and prepared for anything come assessment day.

1. Clone this repo onto your local machine.

2. Navigate to your local repo directory in terminal and run one of the following generators (detailed in below section):

   • ruby practice_test_generator.rb - Generates a practice test with a standard assortment of various questions representative of what you might see on the actual test
   • ruby category_generator.rb - Generates a test by category, based on how many problems of each category you want (requires following a prompt)

3. Run bundle exec rspec from your local repo directory to test your answers against the spec as you work through lib/practice_test.rb. You should run this command from the directory that contains both the /lib and /spec folders that were created by running the generator.

4. Check your solutions against those in solution.rb.

Note: Do not modify anything in the problems, solutions, or specs directories - the files in these directories are used to generate practice assessments. Instead, run one of the generators listed below and work on problems in the test directory created by the generator.

All of the practice problems are listed and categorized in list.csv. Categories include: recursion, sorting, enumerable, array, string, and bonus. Bonus problems will not appear on the assessment but are good to practice and can help you gain a deeper understanding of some of the more complex problems, especially with regards to recursion. There are two different generators included in this repo - they are detailed below.

Command: ruby practice_test_generator.rb

Generates a random practice assessment including problems across all categories (except for bonus). Test files will be generated inside of a directory called practice_assessment.

Command: ruby category_generator.rb (must follow prompt after)

Prompts you for your desired number of questions from each category, and uses your input and the CSV file to generate a test of randomly selected practice problems from each category specified. Test files will be generated inside of a directory called category_assessment.

Generate assessment with all problems - Input all when prompted

Generate assessment with all problems, except bonus - Input all, except: bonus when prompted

For both generators, 3 files will be created inside the generated folder as follows:

• practice_test.rb contains the problems to be solved

• spec.rb combines the specs for the chosen problems into one file for easy testing

• solution.rb combines the solutions for each problem

Warning: If you run the generator again, it will re-write the previously generated files and erase your previous work. If you wish to save your previous work, you will need to rename the files. This applies to both generators.

My fork of this generator ensures that by default when you randomly generate practice tests, you will never get duplicate problems unless you so choose to. The program now keeps track of every problem it's given you and only gives you problems you have never seen before, until you decide to reset the program.

If you would like to reset the program, run the category generator with ruby category_generator.rb, then input reset when prompted. This will reset the program to its default state with randomly generated practice problems being drawn from the entire list of all possible problems again.