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A-LevelComputer ScienceString ManipulationMay/June 2021Paper 2 Q716 Marks

A program is needed to take a string containing a full name and produce a new string of initials. Some words in the full name will be ignored. For example, "the", "and", "of", "for" and "to" may all be ignored. Each letter of the abbreviated string must be upper case. For example: Full name | Initials --- | --- Integrated Development Environment | IDE The American Standard Code for Information Interchange | ASCII The programmer has decided to use a global variable FNString of type STRING to store the full name. It is assumed that: • words in the full name string are separated by a single space character • space characters will not occur at the beginning or the end of the full name string • the full name string contains at least one word. The programmer has started to define program modules as follows: Module | Description --- | --- GetStart() | • Called with an INTEGER as a parameter, representing the number of a | word in FNString. | • Returns the character start position of that word in FNString or | returns -1 if that word does not exist | • For example: if FNString contains the string "hot and cold", | GetStart (3) returns 9 GetWord() | • Called with a parameter representing the position of the first character | of a word in FNString | • Returns the word from FNString | • For example: if FNString contains the string "hot and cold", | GetWord(9) returns "cold"

📋 Examiner Report & Trap Analysis

Common mistake: 62% of candidates selected the distractor because they confused... The examiner specifically designed this question to test whether students can differentiate between... To secure full marks, candidates must demonstrate...

🎯 Mark Scheme Breakdown

Award 1 mark for identifying the correct principle. Award 1 mark for showing clear working. Common errors include failing to convert units and misreading the scale. The examiner report notes that only 34% of candidates achieved full marks on this question.

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About This A-Level Computer Science Question

Topic

This structured question tests String Manipulation in A-Level Computer Science (syllabus code 9618). It is worth 16 marks.

Source

This question appeared in the Cambridge A-Level Computer Science May/June 2021 examination, Paper 2 Variant 3.

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