Question

Inspired by the original thread and the up and coming clones, here’s one for the Perl community.

What are questions a good Perl programmer should be able to respond to?

Answer 1

Questions

• What is a reference?
• How does Perl implement object orientation?
• How does Perl’s object orientation differ from other languages like C# and Java?
• Traditional object orientation in core Perl has largely been superseded by what?
  • Why?
• What is the difference between a package and a module?
• What features were implemented in 5.10?
• What is a Schwartzian transform?

• Explain the difference between these lines of code and the values of the variables.

  my $a = (4, 5, 6);
  my @a = (4, 5, 6);
  my $b = 4, 5, 6;
  my $c = @a;
  

• What are some of Perl’s greatest strengths?

• What are some of Perl’s greatest weaknesses?
• Name several hallmarks of the “modern Perl” movement.
• What does the binding operator do?
• What does the flip-flop operator do?
• What is the difference between for and foreach?
• What makes Perl difficult to parse?
• What are prototypes?
• What is AUTOLOAD?
• What is the Perl motto?
  • Why is this a problem?
• What does use strict; do? Why is it useful?

• What does the following block of code do?

  print (3 + 4) * 2;
  

Tests

• Implement grep using map.
• Implement and use a dispatch table.
• Given a block of text, replace a word in that block with the return value of a function that takes that word as an argument.
• Implement a module, including documentation compatible with perldoc.
• Slurp a file.
• Draw a table that illustrates Perl’s concept of truthiness.