Interview Question

[Lost User]

When are we getting together for lunch or coffee? Michael Martin Australia mmartin@netspace.net.au "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone

[Christian Graus]

When it stops raining :-) I was thinking we could meet in town on Friday ? Maybe outside the offices of your old work, and we could either go for a rampage with Nerf guns, or just throw some bricks, last person to break a window buys the coffee.... Christian I have come to clean zee pooollll. - Michael Martin Dec 30, 2001 Picture the daffodil. And while you do that, I'll be over here going through your stuff.

[Stuart van Weele]

Here are a few: What's the difference between a struct and a class? What happens if you don't define a constructor? What's a copy constructor? What happens if you don't define it? What's the difference between private and protected? Write a generic stack class using templates. What's a thunk? Explain exceptions and how they are used to write robust code. What's RTTI? How does MFC do this instead? Explain how you would write a generic string sorting routine using templates. How would you do it using function pointers? What's name mangling? Why do C++ compilers do it? Describe the various cast operators and where they are used.

[Rick York]

Here are a couple of pages of questions at DDJ that could be helpful to brush up on : Page 1 Page 2 Good Luck. My jokes page

[Lost User]

****Christian Graus wrote: ...or just throw some bricks, last person to break a window buys the coffee.... Sounds good to me. Set the time closer to the day. Michael Martin Australia mmartin@netspace.net.au "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone

[Christian Graus]

Stuart van Weele wrote: What's the difference between a struct and a class? A structs members are public by default, a class's are private. Stuart van Weele wrote: What happens if you don't define a constructor? C++ generates one for you, which will only do a shallow copy of pointers. Stuart van Weele wrote: What's a copy constructor? What happens if you don't define it? A constructor that takes an item of the same type as it's argument and makes the new object a copy of it. If you don't define it, you cannot do this: MyType newItem(ObjectOfMyType); Stuart van Weele wrote: What's the difference between private and protected? Protected items are visible to classes derived from the class in question. Stuart van Weele wrote: Write a generic stack class using templates. Can I skip this one for time ? :-) Stuart van Weele wrote: What's a thunk? Dunno. Stuart van Weele wrote: Explain exceptions and how they are used to write robust code. Exceptions allow me to 'try' to execute code that may fail, and catch the case were it does fail in a way that allows me to clean up after myself, try again if appropriate, and of course, not die in a flaming heap. Stuart van Weele wrote: What's RTTI? How does MFC do this instead? Run Time Type Identification allows me to find out if an object of a base class is of a specific derived class, using dynamic_cast. The cast returns 0 (NULL) if the cast is not appropriate. MFC does this badly. It uses a macro called RUNTIME_CLASS, and from memory, the DECLARE_XXX macro creates an object of some MFC type which is used to facilitate this. I really don't know for sure, because I hate it, and it only exists because MFC is older than X3J16. Stuart van Weele wrote: Explain how you would write a generic string sorting routine using templates. How would you do it using function pointers? Can I skip this one too ? Actually, I'm going to think about this, it's not quite as easy as the templated stack question was. Stuart van Weele wrote: What's name mangling? Why do C++ compilers do it? Name mangling is done by compilers, I believe, in order to give overloaded functions differing names. Stuart van Weele wrote: D

[Michael Dunn]

All the C++ questions I've had to field have been cake, designed to make sure you're were BSing on your resume. The more important part is when the interviewer asks what you did on a project at a previous job. That's where you show off that you know how to practically apply C++ techniques, and that you know more than just the buzzwords. --Mike-- "Everyone has figured out what 'service pack' really means, so they had to go and change the language. Perhaps this is what Bill was talking about in the 'security is top priority' letter."   -- Daniel Ferguson, 1/31/2002 My really out-of-date homepage Sonork - 100.10414 AcidHelm Big fan of Alyson Hannigan.

[Stuart van Weele]

I'm impressed. I would seriously consider hiring anyone who could answer more than 1/2 the questions off the top of their head. A thunk is an on the fly conversion from one type to another. Thunks are used to make 16 bit code work with 32 bit code or for other kluges. I think ATL has a thunk buried in it that allows a static WndProc to be associated with an instance of a ATL class. The template questions are out of Stroustrup. Actually most of these questions are out of Stroustrup.

[Vimal Earnest]

1.If we don't define a copy constructor the compiler will generate one for us and any pointer members will "bitwise" (shallow) copied. 2.A default constructor will do nothing.Nothing is copied.

[Christian Graus]

Damn - when I read your post in my email, I thought 'is he correcting me, I know this', but reading my answer, I put them the wrong way around. Duh. Christian I have come to clean zee pooollll. - Michael Martin Dec 30, 2001 Picture the daffodil. And while you do that, I'll be over here going through your stuff.

[Lost User]

Hrm. It's kind of difficult to describe, and you *won't* get any help from MSDN. (At least the MSDN in VC6 - VS.NET's documentation is much better/more complete.) I'll suggeset a book once I get to work.. (Because I left it there, and can't remember the title/author/ISBN, lol.) Perhaps a simple sample of using std::map<>s as an associative array: ----- #include #include int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { std::map mapAgeName; map.insert(std::make_pair("Kristopher", 21)); map.insert(std::make_pair("Ashley", 19)); map.insert(std::make_pair("Jebidiah", 34)); map["Joeseph"] = 42; cout << "Ashley is " << mapAgeName["Ashley"]->second << "years old." << endl; } ------ Notes: 1. STL defines most of it's classes/functions/templates in the namespace 'std', so if you want to use them, just prefix each one with std:: (or add 'using namespace std' to the top of the program. 2. std::make_pair() makes a "pair" of items - not sure how to describe that. 3. You can access the first element of an item (of an associative array) using ->first; 4. I just woke up.. :laugh: -- .sig error: indeteriminent reader intelligence

[Todd C Wilson]

Explain the differnces between a private, public, and protected constructor. Defened the usages of each of these. Explain when the FRIEND keyword should be used. Explain when FRIEND should not be used. Defend these positions. What is the difference between N++ and ++N? What warning level do you use? Why? Show an example of Templates that could not be done with macros. Do you comment your code? Where? How much? In what way? Do you use the "? :" operator? What does the comma do? Do you pass by reference or by copy? When should you return a const reference to a member variable? No, I'm not making these up. These are actual questions that *I* asked people wben *I've* interviewed them. Yes, I've had a few people go stark raving mad with them - because they are mostly not canned answers, but to get an idea how *they* work and if they know C++ or are just blowing smoke. You'd be surprised!

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Si hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes

[Lost User]

The book is: "The C++ Standard Library" by Nicolai M. Josuttis ISBN: 0-201-37926-0 (Got it at Barnes & Noble, 49.95$) :-D -- .sig error: indeteriminent reader intelligence