Programming Constructs (OCR A Level Computer Science) : Revision Note

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Programming Constructs

What is a Programming Construct?

  • A programming construct determines the order in which lines of code are executed

  • There are three programming constructs. These are

    • Sequence

    • Iteration

    • Branching (also known as selection)

Sequence

  • Sequence refers to lines of code which are run one line at a time

  • The lines of code are run in the order that they written from the first line of code to the last line of code

Branching (Selection)

  • Branching, also known as selection is when the flow of the program is interrupted and a condition is tested

  • The outcome of this condition will then determine which lines or block of code is run next

  • There are two ways to write selection statements:

    • if... elseif... else... statements - this is when you test conditions sequentially 

    • switch... case... statements - this is when you test an expression against multiple possible constant values (known as cases)

Iteration

  • Iteration is repeating a line or a block of code using a loop

  • Iteration can be:

    • count controlled - this is when the code is repeated a fixed number of times (e.g. using a for loop)

    • condition controlled - this is when the code is repeated until a condition is met (e.g. using a while loop or a do while loop)

Identifying programming constructs

  • You can identify which programming constructs are used by looking at certain keywords

  • The keywords if, elseif, else, endif, switch, case indicate that the construct is selection

  • The keywords for, while, do indicate that the construct is iteration

  • If none of these keywords are used, this is a good indication that the construct is sequence

01 numbers = []

02 # Ask the user to enter 5 numbers

03 for i in range(5):

04     num = int(input("Enter a number: "))

05     numbers.append(num)

06 # Assume the first number is the largest

07 largest_number = numbers[0]

08 # Identifying the largest number

09 for num in numbers:

10     if num > largest_number:

11        largest_number = num

12 print("The largest number is:", largest_number)

 

  • In this example, iteration is used twice:

    1. Repeating code to ask the user to enter 5 numbers (indicated by the keyword for on line 03)

    2. Repeating code to identify the largest number (indicated by the keyword for on line 09)

  • In this example, selection is used once to determine if a number is bigger than the currently stored biggest number (indicated by the keyword if on line 10) and if so it will update the largest number on line 11

  • Sequence is any lines of code which does not use iteration or selection. In this example, the first and last lines of code are sequence

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