TCS Most Frequently asked Technical Interview Questions

1. What is pre-processing in C?
A Pre-processor is a system software (a computer program that is designed to run
on computer’s hardware and application programs). It performs pre-processing of
the High Level Language(HLL). Pre-processing is the first step of the language
processing system. Language processing system translates the high level language
to machine level language or absolute machine code(i.e. to the form that can be
understood by machine).
The pre-processor doesn’t know about the scope rules of C. Pre-processor directives
like #define come into effect as soon as they are seen and remain in effect until the
end of the file that contains them; the program’s block structure is irrelevant

2. What is Linking in C?
The object code is combined with required supporting code to make an executable
program. This step typically involves adding in any libraries that are required.

3. Draw binary tree for given number 10,20,8,9,2,1

10
/ \

8 20

/\

2 9

4. What is binary tree?

A Binary Tree is a type of data structure in which each node has at most two
children (left child and right child). Binary trees are used to implement binary search
trees and binary heaps, and are used for efficient searching and sorting.

5. Which sort algorithm is best?

The time complexity of Quicksort is O(n log n) in the best case, O(n log n) in the
average case, and O(n^2) in the worst case. But because it has the best performance
in the average case for most inputs, Quicksort is generally considered the “fastest”
sorting algorithm.

6. Difference between DBMS and RDBMS with example.

• A DBMS is a software used to store and manage data.
• Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is an advanced version
of a DBMS system
• DBMS system, stores data in either a navigational or hierarchical form
TCS Most Frequently asked Technical Interview Questions

• RDBMS uses a tabular structure where the headers are the column names,
and the rows contain corresponding values
• DBMS does not support the integrity constants
• RDBMS supports the integrity constraints at the schema level
• Examples of DBMS are a file system, XML, Windows Registry, etc.
• Example of RDBMS is MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, etc.

7. What is cloud computing?

cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage,
databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the
cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You
typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping lower your operating costs, run
your infrastructure more efficiently and scale as your business needs change.

8. What is bigdata?
Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data – both structured and
unstructured – that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis. But it’s not the
amount of data that’s important. It’s what organizations do with the data that
matters. Big data can be analysed for insights that lead to better decisions and
strategic business moves.

9. What are the types of arrays in c?

a. One dimensional array
b. Multi-dimensional array
• Two dimensional array
• Three dimensional array
• four dimensional array etc…

10. What is copy constructor?

A copy constructor is a member function which initializes an object using another
object of the same class. A copy constructor has the following general function
prototype:
ClassName (const ClassName &old_obj);

11. What is overloading & overriding?

• The real object type in the run-time, not the reference variable's type,
determines which overridden method is used at runtime. In contrast,
reference type determines which overloaded method will be used at compile
time.
• Polymorphism applies to overriding, not to overloading.
• Overriding is a run-time concept while overloading is a compile-time concept.

12. What is pointers in C?

TCS Most Frequently asked Technical Interview Questions

Pointers in C language is a variable that stores/points the address of another

variable. A Pointer in C is used to allocate memory dynamically i.e. at run time. The
pointer variable might be belonging to any of the data type such as int, float, char,
double, short etc.
Pointer Syntax : data_type *var_name; Example : int *p; char *p;
Where, * is used to denote that “p” is pointer variable and not a normal variable.

13. What is Static variables?

Static variables have a property of preserving their value even after they are out of
their scope. Hence, static variables preserve their previous value in their previous
scope and are not initialized again in the new scope.
Syntax:
static data_type var_name = var_value;

14. What is const variable?

Whenever we use const qualifier with variable name, it becomes a read-only

variable and get stored in .rodata segment. Any attempt to modify this read-only
variable will then result in a compilation error: “assignment of read-only variable”.

15. Write a program to check whether the given string is a palindrome or not?
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(){
char string1[20];
int i, length;
int flag = 0;

printf("Enter a string:");
scanf("%s", string1);

length = strlen(string1);

for(i=0;i < length ;i++){

if(string1[i] != string1[length-i-1]){
flag = 1;
break;
}
}

if (flag) {
printf("%s is not a palindrome", string1);
}
TCS Most Frequently asked Technical Interview Questions

else {
printf("%s is a palindrome", string1);
}
return 0;
}

16. Write a program to reverse the given String.

import java.util.Scanner;

public class ReverseString

{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
System.out.println("Enter string to reverse:");

Scanner read = new Scanner(System.in);

String str = read.nextLine();
String reverse = "";

for(int i = str.length() - 1; i >= 0; i--)

{
reverse = reverse + str.charAt(i);
}

System.out.println("Reversed string is:");

System.out.println(reverse);
}
}

17. What is inheritance and abstraction?

One of the most fundamental concept of OOPs is Abstraction. Abstraction is a
process where you show only “relevant” data and “hide” unnecessary details of an
object from the user. For example, when you login to your Amazon account online,
you enter your user_id and password and press login, what happens when you
press login, how the input data sent to amazon server, how it gets verified is all
abstracted away from the you.
This post provides the theoretical explanation of inheritance with real-life examples.
For detailed explanation on this topic with java programs refer inheritance with
examples and types of inheritance in java.
Inheritance is the mechanism by which an object acquires the some/all properties of
another object.
It supports the concept of hierarchical classification.
TCS Most Frequently asked Technical Interview Questions

18. Difference between c , c++ and Java?

C is a general-purpose high-level language that was originally developed by Dennis
Ritchie in 1972 for the Unix operating system. C is a successor of B language which
was introduced around 1970. C is a structured language which is easy to learn and
produces efficient programs. it's a top-down approach. It can handle low-level
activities and can be compiled on a variety of computers. Today C is the most widely
used System Programming Language.

C++ is a general-purpose programming language developed by Bjarne Stroustrup

starting in 1979 at Bell Labs, designed to make programming more enjoyable for the
serious programmers. C++ is a superset of the C programming language. In addition
to the facilities provided by C, C++ provides flexible and efficient facilities for
defining new types. The key concept in C++ is class. A class is a user-defined type.

Java is a programming language created by James Gosling from Sun Microsystems in

1991. The first publicly available version of Java (Java 1.0) was released in 1995. The
Old name of Java was Oak. Java is now taken by Oracle Corporation. The acquisition
of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation was completed by Oracle in January
2010. The current version of Java is Java 1.8 ( Java 8 ). Java is a Programming
language as well as a Platform itself.

19. Write small program to display information in java?

public class AddTwoNumbers {

public static void main(String[] args) {

int num1 = 5, num2 = 15, sum;

sum = num1 + num2;

System.out.println("Sum of these numbers: "+sum);

}
}

20. Explain Heap sort.

Heap sort is a comparison based sorting technique based on Binary Heap data
structure. It is similar to selection sort where we first find the maximum element and
place the maximum element at the end. We repeat the same process for remaining
element.

Let us first define a Complete Binary Tree. A complete binary tree is a binary tree in
which every level, except possibly the last, is completely filled, and all nodes are as
far left as possible (Source Wikipedia)
TCS Most Frequently asked Technical Interview Questions

A Binary Heap is a Complete Binary Tree where items are stored in a special order
such that value in a parent node is greater(or smaller) than the values in its two
children nodes. The former is called as max heap and the latter is called min heap.
The heap can be represented by binary tree or array.

21. Explain oops concepts.

• Object
• Class
• Inheritance
• Polymorphism
• Abstraction
• Encapsulation

22. Explain Kruskal’s algorithm.

• Sort all the edges in non-decreasing order of their weight.
• Pick the smallest edge. Check if it forms a cycle with the spanning tree formed so
far. If cycle is not formed, include this edge. Else, discard it.
• Repeat step#2 until there are (V-1) edges in the spanning tree.

23. Explain Prim’s algorithm.

Prim's algorithm is a minimum spanning tree algorithm that takes a graph as input
and finds the subset of the edges of that graph which form a tree that includes every
vertex has the minimum sum of weights among all the trees that can be formed from
the graph.
Working:
• It falls under a class of algorithms called greedy algorithms which find the
local optimum in the hopes of finding a global optimum.
• We start from one vertex and keep adding edges with the lowest weight
until we reach our goal.
The steps for implementing Prim's algorithm are as follows:
• Initialize the minimum spanning tree with a vertex chosen at random.
• Find all the edges that connect the tree to new vertices, find the minimum
and add it to the tree
• Keep repeating step 2 until we get a minimum spanning tree.

24. What are the properties of binary search tree?

Binary Search Tree, is a node-based binary tree data structure which has the
following properties:
• The left subtree of a node contains only nodes with keys lesser than the
node’s key.
• The right subtree of a node contains only nodes with keys greater than the
node’s key.
TCS Most Frequently asked Technical Interview Questions

• The left and right subtree each must also be a binary search tree.
• There must be no duplicate nodes.

25. What is Data Structure?

A data structure is a particular way of organizing data in a computer so that it can be
used effectively.

26. Example of Function Overloading.

public class Sum {

// Overloaded sum(). This sum takes two int parameters

public int sum(int x, int y)
{
return (x + y);
}

// Overloaded sum(). This sum takes three int parameters

public int sum(int x, int y, int z)
{
return (x + y + z);
}

// Overloaded sum(). This sum takes two double parameters

public double sum(double x, double y)
{
return (x + y);
}

// Driver code
public static void main(String args[])
{
Sum s = new Sum();
System.out.println(s.sum(10, 20));
System.out.println(s.sum(10, 20, 30));
System.out.println(s.sum(10.5, 20.5));
}
}

27. What is Polymorphism?

Polymorphism in Java is a concept by which we can perform a single action in
different ways. Polymorphism is derived from 2 Greek words: poly and morphs. The
word "poly" means many and "morphs" means forms. So polymorphism means
many forms.
TCS Most Frequently asked Technical Interview Questions

There are two types of polymorphism in Java:

• compile-time polymorphism
• runtime polymorphism.
We can perform polymorphism in java by method overloading and method
overriding.

If you overload a static method in Java, it is the example of compile time

polymorphism.

28. Explain Inheritance.

• Inheritance in Java is a mechanism in which one object acquires all the
properties and behaviours of a parent object.
• It is an important part of OOPs (Object Oriented programming system).
• The idea behind inheritance in Java is that you can create new classes that
are built upon existing classes.
• When you inherit from an existing class, you can reuse methods and fields of
the parent class. Moreover, you can add new methods and fields in your
current class also.
Inheritance represents the IS-A relationship which is also known as a parent-child
relationship.

29. Explain exception handling.

The Exception Handling in Java is one of the powerful mechanism to handle the
runtime errors so that normal flow of the application can be maintained.

30. What is Interface in Java?

• Like a class, an interface can have methods and variables, but the methods
declared in interface are by default abstract (only method signature, no
body).
• Interfaces specify what a class must do and not how. It is the blueprint of the
class.
• An Interface is about capabilities like a Player may be an interface and any
class implementing Player must be able to (or must implement) move(). So it
specifies a set of methods that the class has to implement.
• If a class implements an interface and does not provide method bodies for all
functions specified in the interface, then class must be declared abstract.
• A Java library example is, Comparator Interface. If a class implements this
interface, then it can be used to sort a collection.