Let’s review real student logs from 42 Exam 05 attempts. The #1 reason people fail is norminette and memory leaks.
If you pass 42 exam 05, congratulations! You have officially proven you understand dynamic memory, recursion, and data structures deep enough to handle the hardest projects. You typically unlock:
If you failed:
To succeed in 42 exam 05, you need to know the terrain. Most 42 Exam 05s follow a pattern of three mandatory questions plus a bonus.
During the exam, the automated grading system (Moulinette) is strict. Here are the common reasons for failure:
Compilation Flags: The exam compiles with -Wall -Wextra -Werror. Your code must not throw any warnings.
Header Guards: Missing #ifndef, #define, #endif in header files will cause compilation errors if files are included multiple times.
Memory Leaks: Even though C++ has destructors, you must manually delete anything you new. Using tools like valgrind during practice is essential.
Never assume behavior not written in the subject. If the subject says "your function must return a new list," you mustmalloc it. If it says "modify the existing list," you must notmalloc. Over-engineering is an automatic fail.