need help with Pseudocode (1 Viewer)

[jamickey]

hey. who here knows how to use Pseudocode? i got an assessment task and i dont no how to start it. can anyone give me some ideas and some tips on how i can start this because i have no clue.ive attached a copy of the assignment for you. thanks

 

[iRuler]

I remember learning about this in yr 9/10, i dont know if thats enough for you, but I'll upload the part of the book for you in case it can provide any assistance. page 336 onwards I believe.

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[Azamakumar]

lol omg
you're meant to write a rough outline of what you want the code to do
it's a planning stage, ie you don't actually need to write the code out

ie

int main{
ask user to type in their name

save users name to string x

tell em they're a faggot

as opposed to

int main{
char name;
printf("enter your name: ");
scanf("%s", &name);
printf("%s is a faggot", name);

return 0;

 

[LordPc]

to put what Azamakumar said into a form that is a little more computer-sciencey, pseudocode is the algorithm that you will use to complete a task. ideally it should read a bit like english and understandable to your average joe. another way to think about it is this, if you were to do the task by hand, what steps would you go through?

if you want some examples they are all over wikipedia, like here is the pseudocode for bubble sort.

 [B]procedure[/B] bubbleSort( A [B]:[/B] list of sortable items ) [B]defined as:[/B]
  [B]do[/B]
    swapped := false
    [B]for each[/B] i [B]in[/B] 0 [B]to[/B] length(A) - 2 [B]inclusive do:[/B]
      [B]if[/B] A[i] > A[i+1] [B]then[/B]
        swap( A[i], A[i+1] )
        swapped := true
      [B]end if[/B]
    [B]end for[/B]
  [B]while[/B] swapped
[B]end procedure[/B]

the reason they use pseudocode on wikipedia is that its not specific to any particular programming language, so it is understandable to everyone. (if you want proof, compare a haskell implementation of quicksort to a C implementation)

 

[Ben1220]

What LordPc said is completely true. There's a lot of variance between how different people write psuedocode, and it doesn't really matter what exact syntax you choose, so long as it is simple enough, doesn't go into any implementation details, doesn't contain any error checking ect... Psuedocode is never actually compiled and run on a computer, so you don't need to learn "how to write it" Take a look at a few books on algorithms if you want to see more examples of how psuedocode is generally used.