This document introduces pseudocode, which is a non-programming language used to design the logic and flow of a program before writing the actual code. It discusses common pseudocode structures like input/output, conditional statements, loops, and cases. Examples are given for how operations would be written in pseudocode versus actual programming languages like C# and Pascal. The document provides an assignment to write pseudocode that gets a number from the user and prints a message depending on if the number is less than or greater than 7.

2. What is it and why use it?
 A pretend programming language
 Meant to capture the important structure
of a program
 Used for setting out the logic of a
program before writing the code
 Meant to be understandable by anyone

3. Example of pseudocode
No semicolons!
Why not?

4. Pseudocode Assignment
 This confuses people a lot
myVariable  3
C#
myVariable = 3
Pascal
myVariable := 3
It’s got a certain logic. You’re
saying take the value 3 and put it
into myVariable. The arrow facing
left sort of expresses this.

5. Input and Output
 Use ‘READ’ or ‘INPUT’ for keyboard input
C#
Console.ReadLine();
Pascal
ReadLn;
 Use ‘PRINT’ or ‘OUTPUT’ for screen
output
C#
Console.WriteLine(“Hello”);
Pascal
WriteLn(‘Hello’);

6. IF, THEN and ELSE
IF <condition>
THEN
<what to do if true>
ELSE
<what to do if false>
ENDIF

7. Write pseudocode which:
 Gets a number from the user
 If the number is less than 7 says
 “The number is less than 7”
 Otherwise
 “The number is larger than 7”
 Email to gmacleod@mtsn.org.uk

8. FOR loops
FOR i  1 to 10
<do stuff>
NEXT i
You’re not used to this.
It’s the equivalent of the closing }
in C# or the ‘end’ statement in
Pascal

9. REPEAT and WHILE loops
REPEAT
<do stuff>
UNTIL <condition>
WHILE <condition> DO
<do stuff>
ENDWHILE

10. And finally:
CASE myVariable OF
1 : PRINT “1”
2 : PRINT “2”
OTHERWISE
PRINT “Not 1 or 2”
ENDCASE