Perl Programming Interview Questions & Answers

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Create a scope surrounding that sub that contains lexicals.
Only lexical variables are truly private, and they will persist even when their block exits if something still cares about them. Thus:
{ my $i = 0; sub next_i { $i++ } sub last_i { --$i } }
creates two functions that share a private variable. The $i variable will not be deallocated when its block goes away because next_i and last_i need to be able to access it.

Many. For example 'this is a string' can be expressed in:
"this is a string"
qq/this is a string like double-quoted string/
qq^this is a string like double-quoted string^
q/this is a string/
q&this is a string&
q(this is a string)

To answer this question, we first need a sample array. Let's assume that you have an array that contains the name of baseball teams, like this:
@teams = ('cubs', 'reds', 'yankees', 'dodgers');
If you just want to print the array with the array members separated by blank spaces, you can just print the array like this:
@teams = ('cubs', 'reds', 'yankees', 'dodgers');
print "@teamsn";
But that's not usually the case. More often, you want each element printed on a separate line. To achieve this, you can use this code:
@teams = ('cubs', 'reds', 'yankees', 'dodgers');
foreach (@teams) {
print "$_n";
}

/[^W_d]/
We don't have full POSIX regexps, so you can't get at the isalpha() <ctype.h> macro save indirectly. You ask for one byte which is neither a non-alphanumunder, nor an under, nor a numeric. That leaves just the alphas, which is what you want.

$$ref; # returns a scalar
$$ref[0]; # returns the first element of that array
$ref- > [0]; # returns the first element of that array
@$ref; # returns the contents of that array, or number of elements, in scalar context
$&$ref; # returns the last index in that array
$ref- > [0][5]; # returns the sixth element in the first row
@{$ref- > {key}} # returns the contents of the array that is the value of the key "key"

What happens to objects lost in "unreachable" memory, such as the object returned by Ob->new() in `{ my $ap; $ap = [ Ob->new(), $ap ]; }' ?

Their destructors are called when that interpreter thread shuts down.
When the interpreter exits, it first does an exhaustive search looking for anything that it allocated. This allows Perl to be used in embedded and multithreaded applications safely, and furthermore guarantees correctness of object code.

When your caller was in the middle for a while(m//g) loop
The /g state on a global variable is not protected by running local on it. That'll teach you to stop using locals. Too bad $_ can't be the target of a my() -- yet.

With Perl, command-line arguments are stored in the array named @ARGV.
$ARGV[0] contains the first argument, $ARGV[1] contains the second argument, etc.
$#ARGV is the subscript of the last element of the @ARGV array, so the number of arguments on the command line is $#ARGV + 1.
Here's a simple program:
#!/usr/bin/perl
$numArgs = $#ARGV + 1;
print "thanks, you gave me $numArgs command-line arguments.n";
foreach $argnum (0 .. $#ARGV) {
print "$ARGV[$argnum]n";
}

Method #1 - using Perl's dot operator:
$name = 'checkbook';
$filename = "/tmp/" . $name . ".tmp";

Method #2 - using Perl's join function
$name = "checkbook";
$filename = join "", "/tmp/", $name, ".tmp";

Method #3 - usual way of concatenating strings
$filename = "/tmp/${name}.tmp";

Once you have the libwww-perl library, LWP.pm installed, the code is this:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use LWP::Simple;
$url = get 'http://www.websitename.com/';

perl -pi.bak -e 's/t/,/g' myfile.txt

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
@homeRunHitters = ('McGwire', 'Sosa', 'Maris', 'Ruth');
foreach (@homeRunHitters) {
print "$_ hit a lot of home runs in one yearn";
}

The second is disallowed under `use strict "refs"'.
Dereferencing a string with *{"STR"} is disallowed under the refs stricture, although *{STR} would not be. This is similar in spirit to the way ${"STR"} is always the symbol table variable, while ${STR} may be the lexical variable. If it's not a bareword, you're playing with the symbol table in a particular dynamic fashion.

5
length() is a built-in prototyped as sub length($), and a scalar prototype silently changes aggregates into radically different forms. The scalar sense of a hash is false (0) if it's empty, otherwise it's a string representing the fullness of the buckets, like "18/32" or "39/64". The length of that string is likely to be 5. Likewise, `length(@a)' would be 2 if there were 37 elements in @a.

There are a number of ways to dereference a reference.
Using two dollar signs to dereference a scalar.
$original = $$strref;
Using @ sign to dereference an array.
@list = @$arrayref;
Similar for hashes.

Yes. Perl can make a scalar or hash type reference by using backslash operator.
For example
$str = "here we go"; # a scalar variable
$strref = $str; # a reference to a scalar

@array = (1..10); # an array
$arrayref = @array; # a reference to an array
Note that the reference itself is a scalar.

The second would match Foo other than at the start of the record if $* were set.
The deprecated $* flag does double duty, filling the roles of both /s and /m. By using /s, you suppress any settings of that spooky variable, and force your carets and dollars to match only at the ends of the string and not at ends of line as well -- just as they would if $* weren't set at all.

The undefined value in scalar context, and the empty list value () in list context.
This way functions that wish to return failure can just use a simple return without worrying about the context in which they were called.

$@array

open(IN, "<name_file")
or die "Couldn't open file for processing: $!";
while (<IN>) {
chomp;
$hash_table{$_} = 0;
}
close IN;

print "$_ = $hash_table{$_}n" foreach keys %hash_table;

Here's a program that prints the contents
of the grades hash, sorted numerically by the hash value:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Help sort a hash by the hash 'value', not the 'key'.
to highest).
sub hashValueAscendingNum {
$grades{$a} <=> $grades{$b};
}



# Help sort a hash by the hash 'value', not the 'key'.
# Values are returned in descending numeric order
# (highest to lowest).
sub hashValueDescendingNum {
$grades{$b} <=> $grades{$a};
}


%grades = (
student1 => 90,
student2 => 75,
student3 => 96,
student4 => 55,
student5 => 76,
);

print "ntGRADES IN ASCENDING NUMERIC ORDER:n";
foreach $key (sort hashValueAscendingNum (keys(%grades))) {
print "tt$grades{$key} tt $keyn";
}

print "ntGRADES IN DESCENDING NUMERIC ORDER:n";
foreach $key (sort hashValueDescendingNum (keys(%grades))) {
print "tt$grades{$key} tt $keyn";
}

$cur->new()->{LINK}
The indirect object syntax only has a single token lookahead. That means if new() is a method, it only grabs the very next token, not the entire following expression.
This is why `new $obj[23] arg' does't work, as well as why `print $fh[23] "stuffn"' does't work. Mixing notations between the OO and IO notations is perilous. If you always use arrow syntax for method calls, and nothing else, you'll not be surprised.

0
A defined (but false) 0 value is the proper indication of the end of file for read() and sysread().

Because you can inspect the argument count, return context, and object types all by yourself.
In Perl, the number of arguments is trivially available to a function via the scalar sense of @_, the return context via wantarray(), and the types of the arguments via ref() if they're references and simple pattern matching like /^d+$/ otherwise. In languages like C++ where you can't do this, you simply must resort to overloading of functions.

False so long as f() returns false, after which it returns true until g() returns true, and then starts the cycle again.
This is scalar not list context, so we have the bistable flip-flop range operator famous in parsing of mail messages, as in `$in_body = /^$/ .. eof()'. Except for the first time f() returns true, g() is entirely ignored, and f() will be ignored while g() later when g() is evaluated. Double dot is the inclusive range operator, f() and g() will both be evaluated on the same record. If you don't want that to happen, the exclusive range operator, triple dots, can be used instead. For extra credit, describe this:
$bingo = ( a() .. b() ) ... ( c() .. d() );