Oxford, Cambridge and RSA (OCR) GCSE Computer Science Paper 2 Practice

Range check is the correct answer because it specifically verifies whether a given piece of data falls within a defined minimum and maximum limit. This type of validation is crucial for ensuring that inputs are not only expected in terms of their type but also fall within acceptable boundaries. For example, if a program is expecting an age input, a range check would confirm that the age entered is between a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 120. By validating data in this way, applications can prevent errors caused by invalid data points that may lead to unexpected behavior or system failures.

In contrast, other validation checks serve different purposes: a format check ensures that the input conforms to a specific structure (like an email address), a length check validates the number of characters in an input, and a presence check simply confirms that data has been provided at all. Each of these checks is important in various contexts, but they do not address the need for an input to be within specific numerical or logical limits, which is the primary function of a range check.