The manager of a restaurant approached a novice programmer to improve an outdated program used for reservations - NSC Information Technology - Question 5 - 2018 - Paper 2

An algorithm is a sequence of logical steps or instructions designed to perform a specific task or solve a particular problem efficiently.

Debugging involves identifying and resolving defects or issues within a program. This process ensures that the software operates correctly by finding bugs or errors and fixing them.

A runtime error is an error that occurs during the execution of a program, causing it to terminate unexpectedly.

An example of a runtime error is division by zero, which occurs when a program attempts to divide a number by zero during execution.

In a WHILE…DO loop, the condition is checked before the loop is executed, meaning the statements inside the loop may not run if the condition is false from the beginning. In contrast, a REPEAT…UNTIL loop guarantees that the statements within the loop execute at least once, as the condition is evaluated after the loop's statements.

For the instruction 'x := 5 mod 2;', X is an integer (as the result of the modulus operation is an integer). For 'y := 5 mod 2 = 0;', Y is a boolean (as it results in true or false).

This line of code establishes a link between the external text file 'Bookings.txt!' and the program variable tFile, allowing the program to perform file operations on 'Bookings.txt!'.

Replacing Append(tFile) with Rewrite(tFile) will empty the existing file 'Bookings.txt!' and create a new file, resulting in the loss of any existing data within that file.

The I/O error may have occurred because the file 'Bookings.txt!' was not correctly assigned, or it may have been closed beforehand without being reopened.

The requirement for the pin to be valid is that it must contain exactly five digits.

3. Loop counter ← 1 to input number
4. Loop counter2 ← 1 to counter
5. output ← output + counter2
6. Display output
7. EndLoop counter2