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in reply to Perl quiz for beginners
If I saw that quiz at a potential employer I would cross them off my list; I don't need work that badly.
Here are a few of the specific issues:
- "What does Perl represents?" is not proper English. You intend to be asking "What does Perl represent?", but that only corrects how the question is worded. But to imply that Perl must represent something as an acronym is fallacious. It has been ascribed several meanings, but only retrospectively. It doesn't necessarily have to stand for anything.
- "Who is the founder of Perl?" is poorly worded. Larry Wall didn't found Perl, he wrote Perl. He's its original author. He now takes on a different role, while others maintain and contribute to the project.
- "What CPAN means?" is improper English. You intend to ask "What do the letters in CPAN stand for?"
- When I see "Diff b/w chop and chomp" I think "black and white" (like old televisions), not "between." And you're authoring a quiz. Please no home-brewed abbreviations. "What is the difference between chop and chomp?" And the correct answer is not sufficiently accurate.
- Don't confuse the issue by using "unlink($file)", just ask "Which function deletes a file?", with "unlink" as the correct answer.
- If you're going to use the wikipedia definition of autovivification maybe it should be attributed.
- The correct answer on the shebang question is poorly written. There is no verb. It should start with "It is..."
- Who cares which is the latest stable version of Perl? And are you prepared to update that question every time a new version of Perl is released? Furthermore, the latest stable version may not be available on all operating systems at the same time, so perhaps it should be qualified as "currently released.", or better, you should come up with a real question that actually matters and doesn't change frequently.
- I've been checking what Perl version I have available to me with the command line "perl -v" for years, so if that's not the right answer I guess I've been getting bad information for years. I've never used $] from the command line, and can't imagine why I would. The question is also not a complete sentence; it lacks a verb. If your intent is to output only the Perl version and nothing more, reword the question to say "Which of the following one liners will output the Perl version number, and nothing more?
- Maybe you mean to ask, "What is a JAPH?" (which seems like a really lousy "Perl skillz" question). And your "correct" answer is wrong. merlyn coined the phrase, and it's spelled, "Just another Perl hacker,"
- Should be: "Which of the following is a valid Perl comment?"
- "Which of the following sigils precedes an identifier representing a scalar variable?"
- The next question should be: "Which of the following represent a valid filehandle?" And the answers are all correct because any bareword following Perl's rules for identifiers could be a valid filehandle. If you're asking specifically about the default filehandles, they're all full caps, and the question should ask specifically which are the default filehandles instead. And as someone mentioned, your choice to not also present lexical filehandles is unfortunate.
- The last question would result in a compiletime error message, so the correct answer isn't even available as an option.
I am sure that a critical eye would find fault with some of my answers here as well, which will lend credence to this next statement. Good test questions and well chosen answer sets take a lot of thought to compose; a concept that too many teachers fail to recognize. I hate multiple choice questions because I'm constantly asking myself, "Do they want the correct answer, or the answer that I suspect they think is correct?" I do think that the questions themselves would do a poor job of distinguishing a good programmer from a bad one.
I have retyped the next paragraph so many times that I've decided to refrain from saying any more on the subject.
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Re^2: Perl quiz for beginners
by jwkrahn (Abbot) on Sep 09, 2011 at 09:07 UTC
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If you're asking specifically about the default filehandles, they're all full caps,
If you are talking about STDIN, STDOUT and STDERR then perl has always (AFAIK) supported the lower case versions stdin, stdout and stderr although ARGV, ARGVOUT and DATA have to be upper case.
$ perl -le'print for grep /^std/i, %::'
stderr
stdout
stdin
STDOUT
STDERR
STDIN
$ perl -v
This is perl, v5.10.1 (*) built for i486-linux-gnu-thread-multi
Copyright 1987-2009, Larry Wall
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Does it support Stdin, Stdout, and Stderr? Because that's how the answers were worded: In ucfirst format. (And if it does, then holy cow, I'm still a beginner!)
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Re^2: Perl quiz for beginners
by jassics (Initiate) on Sep 09, 2011 at 10:26 UTC
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Few of them were mistakes due to MS word like Stdout instead of STDOUT. I am sorry for that.
Yes, lots of efforts are needed before posting full proof expert like quiz. I am beginner in Perl programming and got many things from these comments that how much effort I need before posting anything here or even in our website.
Thanks for all expert comments. Criticism is always good for someone (here for me :)).
I will try to put next quiz after experimenting and testing a lot.
Davido, as per your comments I modified many questions and answers. hope there will less bugs now.
Perl acronym will always be there even t doesn't mean so. Check Wikipedia or any good universities documents. It will be there. ex: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/perl-man (Canergie Mellon University). So let ti be there for our reference in case if its asked.
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If anything, it's a Backronym, which makes its inclusion in your quiz a poor choice. If you must include it, call it what it is, and don't try to make it look like the name Perl was an artifact derived from a chosen longhand phrase.
Which "good university" has documents stating that Perl is intended to be an acronym?
Before you start telling people to refer to Wikipedia or some vague university's "documents", you should RTFM, or in this case, RTFFAQ:
perlfaq1: What is the difference between perl and Perl?. I won't cut-and-paste it here, but you will find that the Perl documentation disputes your assertion.
While you're at it, you can confirm my JAPH comment here: perlfaq1: What is a JAPH?
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Oh yes, thanks again Dave.
Modified it.
I love this site and its users. They are very active and very knowledgeable. Would love to hear more from you people on our contents.
Either you people can contribute your posts as our guest author or can leave comment at Per Forum
and Perl Blogs
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"Check Wikipedia or any good universities documents. It will be there."
NO!
Not because I care all that much about the specific issue -- whether the name has some specific acronymic meaning, but rather, because you're suggesting that seconday (and very possibly inaccurate) resources should be grounds for ignoring a primary resource, such as Larry Wall's own remarks.
Now, I'll grant that I've not found (in the archives of comp.lang.perl.misc) a statement signed by Wall, nor audio or video of Wall disputing the notion that "perl" or "Perl" is an acronym, nor have I ever had occasion to ask timtoady 'what's the fact?' but the assertions of numerous Perl pioneers (including a good many Monks of Great Tenure; merlyn, tilly (see [Re^5: perl not omnipotent? let's see!), petdance....) are, to me, far more persuasive than sources such as wiki, CS departs at .edus, etc.
Likewise, IMO, the widely reported story that a witty writer invented a backronym to explain his name choice (or as a joke) seems more plausible than that he departed so radically from the common use of
- pedestrian acronyms (COBOL, BASIC, etc.),
- personal initials (awk, for example)
- or personal names with historic CS significance (ADA)
as denominators for computer languages.
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