Cambridge Assessment International Education

Cambridge International Advanced Subsidiary and Advanced Level

* 9 7 4 4 6 8 1 1 6 1 *

COMPUTER SCIENCE 9608/21

Paper 2 Fundamental Problem-solving and Programming Skills October/November 2019
2 hours
Candidates answer on the Question Paper.
No Additional Materials are required.
No calculators allowed.

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST

Write your centre number, candidate number and name in the spaces at the top of this page.
Write in dark blue or black pen.
You may use an HB pencil for any diagrams, graphs or rough working.
Do not use staples, paper clips, glue or correction fluid.
DO NOT WRITE IN ANY BARCODES.

Answer all questions.

No marks will be awarded for using brand names of software packages or hardware.

At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.
The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.

The maximum number of marks is 75.

This document consists of 17 printed pages and 3 blank pages.

DC (ST) 171120/3
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1 Study the following pseudocode.

FUNCTION Search() RETURNS INTEGER

DECLARE N, C : INTEGER
DECLARE V, L : REAL
V GetLevel()
L V * 1.34
C 0
FOR N 1 TO 10
V GetLevel()
IF V > L
THEN
C C + 1
ENDIF
ENDFOR
OUTPUT "Process complete"
RETURN C
ENDFUNCTION

(a) (i) This pseudocode lacks features that would make it easier to read and understand.

State three such features.

Feature 1 ...........................................................................................................................

Feature 2 ...........................................................................................................................

Feature 3 ...........................................................................................................................
[3]

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(ii) Draw a program flowchart to represent the algorithm implemented in the pseudocode.
Variable declarations are not required in program flowcharts.

[5]

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(b) (i) Programming languages support different data types.

Complete the table by giving a suitable data type for each example value.

Example value Data type

"NOT TRUE"

− 4.5

NOT FALSE

132

[4]

(ii) Evaluate each expression in the following table.

If an expression is invalid then write ‘ERROR’.

Refer to the Appendix on page 16–17 for the list of built-in functions and operators.

Expression Evaluates to

LEFT("Start", 3) & RIGHT("Apple", 3)

MID("sample", 3, 5)

NUM_TO_STRING(12.3 * 2)

INT(STRING_TO_NUM("53.4")) + 7

[4]

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2 (a) A structure chart is often used in modular program design. One feature shown is the sequence
of module execution.

State four other features that may be shown.

Feature 1 ..................................................................................................................................

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Feature 2 ..................................................................................................................................

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Feature 3 ..................................................................................................................................

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Feature 4 ..................................................................................................................................

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(b) Identify and describe one feature of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that can
help with program presentation.

Feature .....................................................................................................................................

Description ................................................................................................................................

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[2]

(c) By value is one method of passing a parameter to a subroutine.

Identify and describe the other method.

Method ......................................................................................................................................

Description ................................................................................................................................

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[2]

(d) Explain the term adaptive maintenance.

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3 The following is a function design in pseudocode.

Line numbers are given for reference only.

10 FUNCTION Check(InString : STRING) RETURNS BOOLEAN

11
12 DECLARE NumDots : INTEGER
13 DECLARE Index : INTEGER
14 DECLARE NumOthers : INTEGER
15
16 NumDots 0
17 NumOthers 0
18 Index 1
19
20 WHILE NumDots < 3 AND Index <= LENGTH(InString)
21
22 IF MID(InString, Index, 1) = '.'
23 THEN
24 NumDots NumDots + 1
25 ELSE
26 NumOthers NumOthers + 1
27 ENDIF
28 Index Index + 1
29
30 ENDWHILE
31
32 IF NumDots = NumOthers
33 THEN
34 RETURN TRUE
35 ELSE
36 RETURN FALSE
37 ENDIF
38
39 ENDFUNCTION

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Study the pseudocode. Identify the relevant features in the following table.

Refer to the Appendix on pages 16–17 for the list of built-in functions and operators.

Feature Answer

The number of the line containing a variable being incremented

The range of line numbers containing a pre-condition loop

The number of initialisation statements

The number of the line containing a logical operator

The range of line numbers containing a selection statement

The name of a built-in function

The name of a parameter

[7]

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4 A student is developing a program to count how many times each character of the alphabet (A to Z)
occurs in a given string. Upper case and lower case characters will be counted as the same. The
string may contain non-alphabetic characters, which should be ignored.

The program will:

• check each character in the string to count how many times each alphabetic character occurs
• store the count for each alphabetic character in a 1D array
• output each count together with the corresponding character.

(a) The student has written a structured English description of the algorithm:

1. START at the beginning of the string

2. SELECT a character from the string
3. CONVERT the character to upper case
4. CHECK whether the character is alphabetic and INCREMENT as required.
5. REPEAT from step 2 until last character has been checked
6. OUTPUT a suitable message giving the count of each alphabetic character

Step 4 above is not described in sufficient detail.

The student decides to apply a process to increase the level of detail given in step 4.

State the name of the process and use this process to write step 4 in more detail. Use
structured English for your answer.

Process .....................................................................................................................................

Structured English ....................................................................................................................

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(b) Write pseudocode to implement the program.

You should note the following:

• InString contains the string to be checked. It has been assigned a value.

• The elements of the array Result have all been initialised to zero.
• The ASCII value of letter ‘A’ is 65.

You should assume the following lines of pseudocode have been written:

DECLARE InString : STRING

DECLARE Result : ARRAY [1:26] OF INTEGER

Declare any further variables you use. Do not implement the code as a subroutine.

Refer to the Appendix on pages 16–17 for the list of built-in functions and operators.

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5 The following pseudocode checks whether a string is a valid password.

FUNCTION CheckPassword(InString : STRING) RETURNS BOOLEAN

DECLARE Index, Upper, Lower, Digit, Other : INTEGER

DECLARE NextChar : CHAR

Upper 0
Lower 0
Digit 0
Other 0

FOR Index 1 TO LENGTH(InString)

NextChar MID(InString, Index, 1)

IF NextChar >= 'A' AND NextChar <= 'Z'
THEN
Upper Upper + 1
ELSE
IF NextChar >= 'a' AND NextChar <= 'z'
THEN
Lower Lower + 1
ELSE
IF NextChar >= '0' AND NextChar <= '9'
THEN
Digit Digit + 1
ELSE
Other Other + 1
ENDIF
ENDIF
ENDIF

ENDFOR

IF Upper > 1 AND Lower >= 5 AND (Digit - Other) > 0

THEN
RETURN TRUE
ELSE
RETURN FALSE
ENDIF

ENDFUNCTION

(a) Describe the validation rules that are implemented by this pseudocode. Refer only to the
contents of the string and not to features of the pseudocode.

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(b) (i) Complete the trace table by dry running the function when it is called as follows:

Result CheckPassword("Jim+Smith*99")

Index NextChar Upper Lower Digit Other

[5]

(ii) State the value returned when the function is called using the expression shown. Justify
your answer.

Value .................................................................................................................................

Justification .......................................................................................................................

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[2]

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6 Account information for users of a library is held in one of two text files; UserListAtoM.txt and
UserListNtoZ.txt

The format of the data held in the two files is identical. Each line of the file is stored as a string that
contains an account number, name and telephone number separated by the asterisk character
('*') as follows:

<Account Number>'*'<Name>'*'<Telephone Number>

An example of one line from the file is:

"GB1234*Kevin Mapunga*07789123456"

The account number string may be six or nine characters in length and is unique for each
person. It is made up of alphabetic and numeric characters only.

An error has occurred and the same account number has been given to different users in the two
files. There is no duplication of account numbers within each individual file.

A program is to be written to search the two files and to identify duplicate entries. The account
number of any duplicate found is to be written to an array, Duplicates, which is a 1D array of
100 elements of data type STRING.

The program is to be implemented as several modules. The outline description of three of these is
as follows:

Module Outline description

ClearArray()
• Initialise the global array Duplicates. Set all elements to the
empty string.
• Read each line from the file UserListAtoM.txt
• Check whether the account number appears in file
UserListNtoZ.txt using SearchFileNtoZ()
FindDuplicates() • If the account number does appear then add the account
number to the array.
• Output an error message and exit the module if there are more
duplicates than can be written to the array.
• Search for a given account number in file UserListNtoZ.txt
SearchFileNtoZ()
• If found, return TRUE, otherwise return FALSE

(a) State one reason for storing data in a file rather than in an array.

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(b) Write program code for the module SearchFileNtoZ().

Visual Basic and Pascal: You should include the declaration statements for variables.
Python: You should show a comment statement for each variable used with its data type.

Programming language ............................................................................................................

Program code

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(c) Write pseudocode for the module FindDuplicates().

The module description is given in the table on page 12.

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(d) ClearArray() is to be modified to make it general purpose. It will be used to initialise any
1D array of data type STRING to any value.

It will now be called with three parameters as follows:

1. The array
2. The number of elements
3. The initialisation string

You should assume that the lower bound is 1.

(i) Write pseudocode for the modified ClearArray() procedure.

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(ii) Write program code for a statement that calls the modified ClearArray() procedure
to clear the array Duplicates to "Empty".

Programming language .....................................................................................................

Program code

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[2]

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Appendix
Built-in functions (pseudocode)
Each function returns an error if the function call is not properly formed.

MID(ThisString : STRING, x : INTEGER, y : INTEGER) RETURNS STRING

returns a string of length y starting at position x from ThisString

Example: MID("ABCDEFGH", 2, 3) returns "BCD"

LENGTH(ThisString : STRING) RETURNS INTEGER

returns the integer value representing the length of ThisString

Example: LENGTH("Happy Days") returns 10

LEFT(ThisString : STRING, x : INTEGER) RETURNS STRING

returns leftmost x characters from ThisString

Example: LEFT("ABCDEFGH", 3) returns "ABC"

RIGHT(ThisString: STRING, x : INTEGER) RETURNS STRING

returns rightmost x characters from ThisString

Example: RIGHT("ABCDEFGH", 3) returns "FGH"

INT(x : REAL) RETURNS INTEGER

returns the integer part of x

Example: INT(27.5415) returns 27

NUM_TO_STRING(x : REAL) RETURNS STRING

returns a string representation of a numeric value.
Note: This function will also work if x is of type INTEGER

Example: NUM_TO_STRING(87.5) returns "87.5"

STRING_TO_NUM(x : STRING) RETURNS REAL

returns a numeric representation of a string.
Note: This function will also work if x is of type CHAR

Example: STRING_TO_NUM("23.45") returns 23.45

ASC(ThisChar : CHAR) RETURNS INTEGER

returns the ASCII value of ThisChar

Example: ASC('A') returns 65

CHR(x : INTEGER) RETURNS CHAR

returns the character whose ASCII value is x

Example: CHR(87) returns 'W'

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UCASE(ThisChar : CHAR) RETURNS CHAR

returns the character value representing the upper case equivalent of ThisChar
If ThisChar is not a lower case alphabetic character, it is returned unchanged.

Example: UCASE('a') returns 'A'

Operators (pseudocode)

Operator Description
Concatenates (joins) two strings
&
Example: "Summer" & " " & "Pudding" produces "Summer Pudding"
Performs a logical AND on two Boolean values
AND
Example: TRUE AND FALSE produces FALSE
Performs a logical OR on two Boolean values
OR
Example: TRUE OR FALSE produces TRUE

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© UCLES 2019 9608/21/O/N/19