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This reminds me about an undergrad C course I had. One test was about printf formatting. We were given a serie of crazy format strings (using format specifier I've never encountered again since) and had to know what it would output. This was the most stupid test I've ever had.

There was a similar one about pointers. We called it "Star Wars".

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A test about pointers is not stupid. A test about printf formatters is.

> A test about pointers is not stupid. A test about printf formatters is.

Obviously you did not have the joy of working with people who write their own byzantine 1k LoC formatting code for cases that would have been perfectly covered by printf (and yes, this was on a system where a printf implementation was available).

http://xkcd.com/138/

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