use Perl

• Questions (Score:3, Interesting)

  by petdance (2468) <andy@petdance.com> on 2003.02.21 12:48 (#17366) Homepage Journal

  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 memorization questions, but if you don't what $1 is, then something is wrong.

  For my/our/local, I'm OK with an answer like "I always use 'my'".

  The "delete a file" is there to see who knows the difference between delete() and unlink().

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  xoa

  Reply to This

  • Re:Questions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pudge (1)

    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.
    • 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

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      xoa
  • Re:Questions (Score:2)

    by ajt (2546)

    Once upon a time I went for interview with amazon.co.uk. Overall I'd have to say I didn't like the location or the atmosphere, and I was glad I didn't get the job, however the random test at the interview was actually quite good.

    Without any warning the sat me down with a glass of water, a pencil and a sheet of awful HTML and asked me to fix it. At once I said it was not possible without knowing the DTD I was correcting it too, they said "current", and left me to it. I know I scored well they told me so wh

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    -- "It's not magic, it's work..."