Boardman College maintains two files—one for Sociology majors and another for Anthropology majors. Each file contains students' ID numbers, last names, first names, and grade point averages. Each file is in student ID number order. The college is merging the two departments into a Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Design the logic for a program that merges the two files into one file containing a list of all students.
To design a logic for merging the two files into one, you can follow these steps:
1. Open the file for Sociology majors and read the data.
2. Open the file for Anthropology majors and read the data.
3. Create a new file, let's call it "merged_file", to store the merged data.
4. Initialize variables to keep track of the current positions in both files.
5. Read the first record from each file.
6. Loop until both files have been completely processed:
a. Compare the student ID numbers from both files.
b. If the ID number from the Sociology file is smaller, write that record to the merged_file and read the next record from the Sociology file.
c. If the ID number from the Anthropology file is smaller, write that record to the merged_file and read the next record from the Anthropology file.
d. If the ID numbers are the same, merge the student's data by concatenating the last names, first names, and grade point averages, and write the merged record to the merged_file. After that, read the next record from both files.
7. If there are any remaining records in the Sociology file, write them to the merged_file.
8. If there are any remaining records in the Anthropology file, write them to the merged_file.
9. Close all file connections.
This logic ensures that the merged_file contains a list of all students from both the Sociology and Anthropology departments, sorted by their student ID numbers.