Comments on: The Hardest Test I Ever Gave (C++)

By: pierre

pierre — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:01:24 +0000

I think you’ve confused puzzles with education.

I’ve been programming since 1965, and I wouldn’t waste two minutes on trying to unravel these conundrums.

First, they will render differently depending on the compiler.

Second, why rack your brain when you can just compile them and let the compiler do the work for you.

Third, anyone writing like this in production code would get [A] a stern warning and then [B] fired.

By: Sven Callaerts

Sven Callaerts — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:52:53 +0000

I agree with Mark Richards in that I don’t see the use of these kind of tests (either in education or in job tests). It’s the equivalent of those spelling tests where you have to spell words that are never used in real live (except when you do spelling contests). Some people might enjoy figuring out what the result of 3x+++%12^–45 is, but it proves nothing except that those people have nothing better to do.

By: CH Gowri Kumar

CH Gowri Kumar — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:09:44 +0000

You might be interested in my collection of these sort of questions as well:-)
http://www.gowrikumar.com/c/index.html

By: CPP

CPP — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:58:24 +0000

Question (1e) is undefined, since it has the expression “x = x++”.

By: Pedro

Pedro — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:26:10 +0000

@Tim: ‘5//3′ is as valid an expression as ‘5 /* blah */’ or as ‘6*4′. The semicolon is not part of the expression. The rest of the line would be ignored but that’s not relevant for it being an expression or not. The value of that expression is 5. Think e.g. #define n 5//3. So the answer to 2d is 5, regardless of how you “make it work”.

By: Bill King

Bill King — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:25:49 +0000

Ow. My brain went pop on one or two of those, and I’ve been doing this proffesionally for at least 10 years.

That said, I’ve spent most of the day tracking down who’s sending my code a packet of spurious data. Stupy event driven systems with no origin information.

By: ex

ex — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:16:31 +0000

ouch man! poor students…