Two years ago I wrote a short Perl test for perspective employees of the company I work for...

1.    What does following statement do?
print (2 * 3) + 3;

2.    Why is the ‘use strict;’ statement useful?

3.    Write a regular expression that removes trailing white space fro
+m a string

4.    What is the difference between a lexical variable and a package 
+variable?

5.    What does the following statement do?
$var = $#array;

6.    What does the ‘<=>’ operator do?

7.    Given the following data structure.
        How would you access the value ‘c’ in the scalar $a?

$a = [
        ‘a’,
        ‘b’,
        [
            ‘c’,
            ‘d’
        ],
        ‘e’
      ];
[download]

The test is part of a larger exam that also covers 'C', Unix, Java and SQL. Candidates are asked to rate their knowledge of the technoglogies from none, fair, good or expert. Therefore, I want the Perl section just to give me an indication that they are telling the truth. If we wanted a Perl specialist I'd do a technical interview with them later. The problem is I don't think the test I wrote does this. While some questions seem reasonable to me, I get complaints about others. OK Question 1 is a bit of a trick question - I think I originally saw it suggested on a Perl site and thought it fair enough. But I've seen fairly decent Perl people getting 3,4,5,6 and 7 wrong.

Does any one have any better suggestions?

Needless to say that I consider most people who read this site as more than acceptable for our needs!

edited: Fri May 2 16:19:40 2003 by jeffa - title change (was: A Perl test)