42 Exam Rank 03

The cadets who pass Rank 03 are not necessarily the smartest—they are the most methodical. They write one function at a time. They test obsessively. They read error messages. And when they inevitably encounter a segmentation fault at 2 AM in the exam room, they do not panic. They pull up dmesg , they run valgrind mentally, and they fix the pointer.

c , s , p , d , i , u , x , X , %

none. That’s right. No - , 0 , . , * , or width handling is required for the exam. 42 Exam Rank 03

Because you must handle %p (pointer address in hex) and variable argument lists using stdarg.h . One misplaced va_arg or an off-by-one in a write call will cause a SIGSEGV (segmentation fault) and instantly fail the exam. The cadets who pass Rank 03 are not