Phone Interview with Nike

[bcarr]

Well, today was interesting. We were real busy at work and so for the second day in a row I was out moving and not in the warehouse. I don't like that as things get misplaced and such when there is no one knowledgable around in the warehouse (and Bruce is out for a few weeks as he had knee surgery). Drats

Comments

[davidmc24]

Wow... from the sounds of that, I couldn't have answered any of their questions; Then again, it also sounds like a position that I wouldn't have applied for, being heavily UNIX based. A good interview does three things. First, it tests to see if you have the base skills required for the position. Second, it tests to see which "preferred" skills you may have. Third, it tests to find the limit of your knowledge, what skills you don't have. For example, in my interview, they uncovered that I was skilled at Java, had a good grasp on object oriented design though wasn't particularly firm on terminology, had some background in management, and was rusty in C++. I'm just amazed that they would ask you a "how many lines would this print" question for a shell script over the phone... sheesh!

[davidmc24]

In terms of the shell script, it seems that (from running it, as written in your post) that it prints one line. My understanding of the script is that first, it echos three lines (echo always ends with a new line) which it pipes as input to the block which comprises the remainder of the script. It then reads a line into x, outputs the line, and then sends the rest of the input to /dev/null (which produces no output to the screen). When it next checks read x, there is nothing to read, so the loop completes.

Through discussion, we came up with valid 3 answers to the rm -r problem.

1) Use the path of the file, so it isn't interpreted as a switch:
rm ./-r
2) List another file (a dummy file) before the -r file, so that it's past argument checking
rm dummy -r
3) Use the special - or -- switch to end argument checking
rm - -r
rm -- -r
#3 is documented at the end of the rm man file under the notes.

Overall, I don't see how the questions relate to your qualifications for the position. What was the job description?

Give Us A Hint

[bcarr]

The job position was