Pseudocode Decisions

Just like with making decisions in a Flowcharts, you can easily make decisions with Pseudocode.

Decisions once again need to be in a simple yes/no or true/false style format. Remember, computers are stupid, so we must keep things simple for them.

To create a decision, we typically need our condition, and then a body. Since we don’t have flowlines like we do with a flowchart, we need to find a way to make it easy to identify what part of our pseudocode is part of the conditional body, and what part is outside. The easiest way I’ve found is to indent the part of the code which will be inside of the conditional body. I will also often use blank lines to separate blocks of logic to make it easier to read.

Our conditional question usually starts with if then has the condition and then a then statement. We could read it as if condition then…

Here is an example:

if age >= 16 then
    print "You can get your driver's license."

program ends

What if Condition is Not True

Well, this depends. Sometimes we will do nothing, and just bypass that portion of code. However, if we want to do something, we’ll use a word like else. Else will let us know that there are things to do if the condition was not met.

Once again, we would indent the else block, so we know when it ends

if age >= 16 then
    print "You can get your driver's license."
else
    print "You cannot get a driver's license yet."

program ends

Pseudocode Decisions was originally found on Access 2 Learn