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OPPE 2

OPPE 2 covers Weeks 1–8 of the Programming in Python course. It builds on OPPE 1 and additionally tests file handling, dictionaries, sets, higher-order functions, and more complex I/O patterns.

Exam Structure

Section Questions Marks each Total
Section 1 3 10 30
Section 2 2 15/20 30/40
Section 3 2 20/15 40/30
Total 7 - 100

Syllabus (Weeks 1–8)

  • Weeks 1–5 - Everything from OPPE 1 (strings, lists, functions, conditionals, loops)
  • Week 6 - Dictionaries - creation, access, .get(), .items(), comprehensions
  • Week 7 - Sets, sorted(), lambda, map(), filter()
  • Week 8 - File handling - open(), read(), readlines(), with statement

Know Your Exam - Section-wise Patterns

Section 1 (10 marks each)

Short function-writing problems. Expect boolean checks, string operations, and simple list/dict manipulations. One question often tests a dictionary operation (swap, lookup, or membership).

Section 2 (15 marks each)

  • S2P1 - Function-writing, moderately harder. Often involves list filtering with conditions, counting with a dict, or working with None values.
  • S2P2 - Almost always a full I/O problem. Reads multiple lines, processes them (sorting, grouping, counting), and prints the result. Dictionaries and sets are common here.

Section 3 (20 marks each)

  • S3P1 - Function-writing, hardest of the set. Frequently involves multiple functions on the same data structure (dicts, lists of dicts, sets of tuples). Expect aggregation, filtering, and sorting together.
  • S3P2 - Almost always a file-in, stdout-out problem. Reads from a file (using the provided filename variable) and prints to standard output. Common patterns: character-by-character text transformation, line reordering, sequential replacement.

General strategy

File I/O problems (S3P2) follow a fixed template - read the file, process, print. Master the template first. For S3P1, sketch out each sub-function separately before writing code - the functions often depend on each other.

Exam Sets

2025

OPPE 2 - 2025

January, May session

See Solutions
2024

OPPE 2 - 2024

September session

See Solutions

Slide downloads

All slide decks are in the GitHub repository.