How often does this actually need to be done? I know beginner coders who struggle with this, esp when it comes to AJAX. I very much doubt that someone with no interest in coding who is forced to code because of some government initiative for one semester is going to fare any better at that task.

The point is, unless you have some self interest in the subject then there is no point in forcing you to learn it, it is going to be of no benefit to you in your future life.

At work, I had a spreadsheet. Technical people, coders even, had a hard time finding the solution: convert to CSV, cut -f, awk print, in order to tack a hostname onto a column with relative HTTP paths. (No error checking required.)

If you were using Excel, you code have just written a VBA macro to do it, or created another column with formula =CONCATENATE("http://domain/",A1) if that's what you mean