A concert venue uses a program to calculate admission prices and store information about ticket sales. A number of arrays are used to store data. The computer is switched off overnight and data has to be input again at the start of each day before any tickets can be sold. This process is very time consuming.

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2021). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. [1] Data from the arrays is written to the files at the end of the day / before the program is terminated / computer is switched off
2. [1] Data can then be read from the files at the start of the next day and written to / stored in the arrays
3. [1] No need to (re-)enter the data manually // only need to enter data once
4. [1] The data is retained when the program is terminated / after the computer is switched off // data is stored permanently // non-volatile storage
5. [1] Data items are combined to form a single string / saved as a single line in the file
6. [1] Data items are separated by a special character // make each data item a fixed length
7. ALTERNATIVE:
8. [1] Convert all data items / 'number of people' to strings
9. [1] Consecutive / each line stores a separate data item
10. [1] Procedure heading (including parameter) and ending
11. [1] File OPEN and subsequently CLOSE
12. [1] Check if file is empty and output a warning message if it is
13. [1] Conditional Loop
14. [1] Output line (including blank lines) and read next line in a loop