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A-LevelComputer ScienceSystem software9618/32 · May/June 2025 · Q84 Marks

Explain what is meant by lexical analysis during program compilation.

Explain what is meant by lexical analysis during program compilation.[4]

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2025). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

MP1 It is the first stage of compilation
MP2 White space and comments are removed
MP3 It takes modified source code and breaks it into a series of tokens
MP4 Each token is categorised and assigned types
MP5 Identifiers are stored in a symbol table
MP6 If the lexical analyser finds invalid tokens, it generates an error
MP7 Acceptable data from the lexical analyser passes to the syntax analyser

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About this question

Topic: System software, A-Level Computer Science (syllabus 9618). Structured question, 4 marks.
Source: A-Level Computer Science, May/June 2025 Paper 3 Variant 2, question 8.

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