[Year 12 IT Apps] Short Answer Q9

[Mark Kelly]

I fear it's just another case of less-than-perfect wording.  They 
probably should have said "displayed" rather than "returned" but I guess 
they never thought that students could misinterpret it.

Besides, if they really meant 'returned' as in a function's return value 
before it's displayed, they would be violating the ITA study design. 
Only Software Development would cover that.

The only people who know how Excel internally represents text before 
it's displayed are Microsoft programmers.

It would surely not be stored in RAM with ASCII double quotes fore and 
aft. In my old days of assembly language, strings were stored as raw 
(ASCII) bytes and interpreted as a string because the programmer knows 
the data is meant to be a string.  And in C, strings are represented as 
an array of ASCII bytes with a pointer to its starting point in RAM and 
(as far as I remember) a zero byte terminator.

No double quotes.

As a wise man said: "If a string returns in the RAM, but no-one's 
running a trace program, does it make double quotes?"

Colin SUTTON wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> A very able programming student (he won Swingame and writes Java code on 
> the whiteboard for amusement!) sent me this:
> ***************************************
> Hi Mr Sutton,
> 
> I have come with a dispute. Question 9 in the multiple choice.
> 
> "
> Typing the formula =IF(D12<D6,"HOORAY"," ") in D13 returns
> A. HOORAY
> B. NO MONEY LEFT OVER
> C. ""
> D. "HOORAY"
> 
> Answer is A.
> 
> Using the data provided, D12 (total March income) is 1400+150+800 = 
> $2350. D6 is 2500+30+20 = $2550.
> 
> Plugging those figures into the formula gives =IF(2350<2550,"HOORAY"," ").
> Since 2350 is less than 2550, the 'true' condition of the IF is 
> calculated: the literal text /Hooray./
> There are no double quotes displayed in the cell, so it's not D."
> 
> The question asks what is returned by the statement, not what is 
> displayed. I wrote this on the examination paper indicating the 
> difference and the wording, so this answer in my opinion is wrong. The 
> value it returns is a string, hence the quotes, but a string is 
> displayed in a cell omits the quotation marks, but the question does not 
> state "what is displayed" but rather "what is returned".
> 
> Hopefully you can return some light to this.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Josh
> 
> *******************************************
> My reply:
> Hi Josh
> 
> My response is also A.
> 
> The STRING    HOORAY   is returned.
> 
> You TELL Excel the value for the true is the string HOORAY by typing 
> (and displaying in the formula)  "HOORAY".
> 
> However, I can see your interpretation, but I think the RETURN is HOORAY 
> - a string. Our CONVENTION is to use the "....".
> 
> However, writing on the paper is probably a COMPLETE waste of time.
> 
> Anyone with thier ideas?
> 
> Regards
> 
> COLIN
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-- 
Mark Kelly
Manager - Information Systems
McKinnon Secondary College
McKinnon Rd McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
Direct line / Voicemail: 8520 9085
School Phone +613 8520 9000
School Fax +613 9578 9253
kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au

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