Question

Creating a Test and Debug Plan Quick Check 4 of 54 of 5 Items Question Suppose you have written a simple search program as follows: def findIt(ar, x): for i in range (len(ar)): if (x != int(ar[i])): return i return -1 v = [24, 20, 29, 32, 34, 29, 49, 46, 39, 23, 42, 24, 38] a = int(input("search for: ")) print (findIt(v, a)) For every number except 24, the output is 0. For 24 (which should have an output of 0) the output is 1. Which variable should be included in a debugging statement before the return to find the problem? (1 point) Responses ar ar i i x x ar[i] ar[i] Skip to navigation page 5 of 5

Answer 1

In the provided code, the problem arises from how the function `findIt` checks for a match with the target value `x`.

Specifically, the condition `if (x != int(ar[i])):` checks if the integer value of `ar[i]` is not equal to `x`. If they are not equal, it immediately returns the current index `i`, which is `0` on the first pass. This means that for any value of `x` that is not equal to the first element in `v` (which is `24`), it will return `0` without continuing to check the rest of the array.

Therefore, to debug the function effectively, you want to find out the value of `ar[i]` in each iteration to see if it's being evaluated correctly. Hence, the variable you should include in a debugging statement before the return to find the problem is:

**`ar[i]`**

Adding a debug statement like this could help:

```python
print(f"Checking value: {ar[i]}, against: {x}")
```

This would let you see what comparison is being conducted right before the check that leads to the return.