use Perl

• Questions (Score:3, Interesting)

  by petdance (2468)

  For the last two hires I had, I threw together a few questions about Perl to smoke out anyone who obviously had never done anything with the language.

  What are the differences between C<our>, C<my> and C<local>?
  
  What is C<$!>?
  
  What is C<$_>?
  
  What is C<$&>?
  
  What is C<$1>?
  
  How do you delete a file?
  
  What does C<TMTOWTDI> mean?
  
  How do you implement a list of hashes?

  I figure that someone who's been using Perl for a while will know all these. I don't like memo

  --
  

  --
  xoa
  • Re:Questions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pudge (1) on 2003.02.26 23:02 (#17542) Homepage Journal

    FWIW, I would not expect everyone to know what our() or $& is; the former is new, the latter is rarely used. I would not care if anyone knew what TMTOWTDI is. Of course, that they cannot answer the question accurately isn't a bad sign, necessarily.

    Reply to This

    Parent

    • Re:Questions (Score:2, Interesting)

      by petdance (2468)

      Right, none of them are necessarily exclusionary. It's just to get a feel for what the person knows overall. None of them are make-or-break. (Well, maybe $_ is)

      I make a big point of starting out the interview by saying "You will not know the answer to everything I ask. You will not have experience in everything I ask about. Please don't think that any one question is going to kick you out the door."

      It's not just Perl stuff that I make that comment for. For instance, I was looking over some sysadmi

      --
      

      --
      xoa