P-7.2 Reading Code and Pseudocode
You can take a printed function in C, Python or plain pseudocode and say what it outputs, by working it on paper rather than guessing.
The written half of a screening test is nearly all one skill: here is a short piece of code, what does it print. It rewards paper speed rather than depth, and the way to build it is the dry-run table, where each variable is a column and each pass of the loop is a row. Pseudocode is the same skill with the syntax removed, which is why the conventions used in algorithm textbooks are worth ten deliberate minutes: papers that set questions this way assume them, and a reader who has never seen arrow assignment loses marks to notation rather than to reasoning.
Work through these
Build a dry-run table: one column for each variable, one row for each pass
The table is the whole technique. Writing the variables down each time round the loop turns a question you were holding in your head into arithmetic you can check afterwards.
IndiaBIX: C Programming Questions and Answers · TutorialWork twenty output questions on arrays and control flow, and mark every wrong one
Twenty is enough to expose your own repeated mistake, which is usually an off-by-one or an assignment read as a comparison. The wrong answers are the useful half of the set.
IndiaBIX: C Programming Questions and Answers · TutorialRead the pseudocode conventions an algorithms textbook uses before you meet them under a clock
Indentation for blocks, arrow assignment and counting from one are the usual conventions, and a paper that prints pseudocode assumes you know them. Ten minutes of reading removes a whole category of avoidable error.
Algorithms · ReferenceTrace a recursive function by drawing the call tree, not by re-reading the code
Recursion is where tracing in your head fails first. Drawing each call as a node with its arguments, then filling in what each returns on the way back up, makes the answer visible instead of remembered.
Turn one of your own functions into pseudocode, then write it back as code from the pseudocode alone
The round trip tests whether you can separate what an algorithm does from the syntax it happens to be written in. That separation is what a pseudocode question is really checking.
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