past papers for comp subjects are iffy, if they're not on the library reserve website, you're probably not going to get them. For comp subjects at least, when you take the exam and the paper is pink you're not allowed to keep it. I think this is mainly so the lecturers can just change some minor details and rehash the exams :>
re the assignment, you need to think about the different types data you have and the relations they share, and how you want to use that data. take representing the maze thingy.
- you have a set of nodes representing caverns
- each node can has links to many other caverns (a one to many relationship).
- you want to be able to tell if a given node has a lighted candle
- you want to find the next node the minotaur will go to (determined alphabetically)
i think a good way to do this would be to use the stl map class to represent the labyrinth. you would also need a smaller class/struct for a node (the pair class might be good), which would store the character with the cavern name (eg 'A' or 'B' or ...) and a flag if theres a candle in it. then you would map this cavern struct to a list of characters representing the other caverns there is a path to. so it would look sortof like this
A -> B,C,D
B -> A,D
D -> B,G
and so on. This says from A you can get to B,C, and D, from B you can get to A,D etc.
hopefully this should give you a start, its important you gain experience in working out how to do this stuff for youself, so i wont go into more detail.
As a final note, just yesterday i got a copy of "The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Edition" by Bjarne Stroustrup, the guy who created C++. Its really good and i wish i had it when i was in 2nd year, it explains heaps about C++ that i never understood. There are (illegal) free copies available online, but books are much easier to use when you want to jump around from section to section. It will probably save you much hair pulling, and worth the $ if you're doing a comp degree. Theres a whole lot of shit textbooks/references on C++ and lecturers seem to love choosing them as texts.
