Top 40 Perl Interview Questions and Answers for Programmers

Hello guys, if you have been working as a professional Software developer then you may have heard about Perl, one of the most powerful scripting languages. Perl is really great when it comes to creating reports, write scripts to analyze text, and connect to DB, load data and generate reports. Perl is even more important for IT support professionals, business analysts, and IT professionals who need to work in the field of operations. That's why Perl questions are quite common during Software developer and IT support interview, especially if the Job description mention Perl or you have added Perl as a skill in your resume or LinkedIn Profile.

In this article, I am going to share popular Perl Interview questions for programmers and developers, particularly for support engineers.  If you are preparing for a Perl programmer interview or for a job where Perl skills are required then you should review these questions.

They will not only help you during your interview but also help you to brush up on key Perl concepts which will be required in your day-to-day job. Even If you are an Interviewer then you can also use these Perl questions to identify a good Perl programmer.

Btw, if you are new to Perl and want to learn it in a structured way then you should join a comprehensive and hands-on Perl course to master these useful skills. If you need a recommendation then I suggest you check out these free Programming Courses to start with, one of them is to learn Perl for FREE from Educative. 

John is a great instructor and this is a hands-on course to learn Perl by actually creating useful Perl scripts for automating day-to-day tasks and web scraping and others. If you need more resources then you can also checkout these best Perl development courses to start with. 




40+ Perl Interview Questions with Answers

Without wasting any more of your time, here is the list of 40 frequently asked Perl interview questions for programmers and developers. I have not provided the answer but you can easily find them by doing Google and most likely you already know a couple of them. Anyway, I also plan to put the answer, if you need just drop a note.

Top 40 Perl Interview Questions and Answers for Programmers


1. Difference between my and local variables in Perl?

2. What do you get if you evaluate a hash in list context?

3. When does Perl 5 reclaim the memory used by a variable?

4. How do you pass one or more distinct arrays into a function?

6. What's the difference between accessing an array element with $items[$index] and @items[$index]?

7. What do variable sigils indicate in Perl 5?

8. What is the meaning of $_ in Perl?

9.  What is the difference between == and eq in Perl?

10. What is the difference between use and require in Perl?

11. What does the 'qw(..)' mean? What's the use of it? when do we use it?

12. How do you look up keywords in the Perl documentation?

13. What is the difference between a function and a method in Perl?

14. What does the chomp function do in Perl?

15. How to find the length of Array in Perl?

16. Where do tests go in a standard CPAN distribution?

17. How do you ensure that the default scope of a variable is lexical?

18.  How do you load and import symbols from a Perl 5 module?

19. What does %@, and represent in Perl?

20. What governs how Perl 5 loads modules How can you influence the list of directories from which Perl attempts to load modules?

21. How to open and close files in Perl?

22. What do parentheses around the variable name in my ($value) = @_; mean, and what would happen if you removed them?

23. What is the difference, on the caller side, between return; and return undef;?

24. How do you run tests in a standard CPAN distribution?

25. How do you access only the values of a Perl 5 hash?

26. How to run a Perl program from the command line?

27. How do I read command-line arguments with Perl?

28. What happens when you pass an array into a function?

29. How do you look up error messages in the Perl 5 documentation?

30. What does this symbol mean '->'

31. Is new a builtin function/keyword in Perl?

32. What command do you use to install new distributions from the CPAN?

33. How do you handle parameters within a method or function in Perl 5?

34. Why would you use the three-argument form of the open builtin?

35. What is the difference between reading a file with for and with a while?

36. How do you catch an exception in Perl 5?

37. How do you throw an exception in Perl 5?

38. How do you read the documentation of a core library? A CPAN module?

39. How do you detect (and report) errors from system calls such as open?

40. What do parentheses around the variable name in my ($value) = @_; mean, and what would happen if you removed them?


That's all about some good Perl Interview Questions and Answers for developers. If you are starting to learn Perl, this list is a good way to measure your skills. A good Perl developer should be able to answer all of these questions without much difficulty and with a little bit of study and practice. You can also read a good text on Perl to learn more about these questions like Modern Perl.


Other Interview Questions you may like

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you find these Perl interview questions useful for your preparation and learning then please share it with your friends and colleagues, online and offline, on social media, and on emails.

If you have any suggestions or feedback, please drop a note. If you also struggle to find an answer to any of the questions, drop a note too.

P.S. - If you are new to Perl and want to learn it to enhance your skill then I highly recommend you checking ouEnhance your Skill Set with Perl course on Udemy. It's a great course to learn hands-on Perl for scripting and becoming an all-rounder developer.

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Ah, thanks for pointing it out, I will replace that with other question

      Delete

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