Job assignment

[GulHK]

Hello everyone

To be honest I have been given an assignment from a company I have applied for a job recently. As I am a recent graduate so am finding that task very difficult. Could you please have a look at it and see if anyone could help me with it.

Is there anyway I can attach files to this thread having that assignment?

Thanks

[firix]

Hi,

exactly what you want?

[GulHK]

The detail of the assignment that has been given to me are as follows:

Simple Statement Parsing and LibXML2 Output

Input: Single text file, no formatting present, blank lines suppressed. Variable length entities.
Output: Hierarchical XML file with sensibly named tags.
Platform: Should be capable of compiling and running on
(1) MS Windows (MSVC++) and
(2) Linux/BSD/OSX (GCC) without changes to the source.
Language: C or C++
Resources: libxml2 (http://xmlsoft.org/)

Your task is to employ either the freely downloadable MS Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition (for Windows) or
GCC (for unix-like operating systems) in conjunction with the free Gnome XML C Parser Toolkit (libxml2) to
produce a sensibly and properly structured XML file from the input file enclosed.
The data file is an extract from a flat text print output from a customer's statement run. An annotated printout
of the file is attached depicting what the various sections of the file indicate, and would make sensible names
for XML tags.

We employ a variety of operating systems, so demonstrate the use of portable code where appropriate and
use pre-processor instructions to switch to alternative functions on different platforms if necessary.
It is not necessary for you to develop and test the code on both platforms, however if you choose to use an
OS-dependent library, you need to demonstrate you've researched the alternative for the other main platform
and provide the preprocessor code to switch between the methods.

The structure of the produced XML file should be flexible enough to accommodate reasonable variations in
the input file (for example, multi-page documents, very long addresses) and the code produced should be
legible, maintainable and upgradable.

The program should return an identifiable error code on encountering a problem, and inform the operator via
standard error. If successful, the program should complete silently.

Please return submissions including the source, the input, the output and any additional libraries used.

They have also given me a input file but dont know how to attach it.

[z05DSL3A]

Sorry but this is worse than asking for homework to be done.

[firix]

Have you looked here ?

http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/files/

[Return 0]

Are you kidding? Do you think you'll be better off if we help you complete the assignment and get the job? You'll be screwed.

[firix]

Unfortunately, this site like that..................

[sohguanh]

Even if we help you to "get" into the company, your capabilities will be found out pretty soon. At most you can get 1 - 2 months salary and soon you have to look for the next job.

Do you want your working career to be like that ? "Smoke" get in take 1 - 2 months salary come out look for another company and repeat the same strategy all over again ?

I believe in some countries there is welfare scheme. You are jobless you queue up get monies. This scheme does not apply to my country as it will breed laziness and dependency and hardworking ppl are supporting for all that welfare.

[wtf]

GulHK: I'd be cautious if I were you. I don't know anything about the job or the company you've applied to, but it sounds like it could be a scam. They could be trying to get free work done for them. Unless you are being paid for this, skip it, move on, and don't look back. Stunt doubles in hollywood used to be asked to perform a 'screen test' to check their stunt capabilities. Hollywood producers & directors who employed them, always looking to pinch and save a few extra dollars would often times use the footage from the screen test in the final edited version, never paying the stunt doubles. Because of this, many stunt doubles began to hold a cigar in their lips while performing for the screen test (whenever possible) so that the directors would have to formally 'hire' them to come back and do a reshoot without the cigar.

A class mate of mine in college, once asked our German professor if being asked to translate a 10-page document for a job application was a bit much. Our professor reccomended doing no more than 2 pages.

If it sounds like a good job and a ligitimate company, I'd reccomend calling the hiring supervisor and proposing a counter-offer, something else that is less time consuming to demonstrate your skills, something preferably that they'd have no real use for. Perhaps a portion of the above assignment, but certainly not the whole thing.

Of course, others might tell you otherwise, I've never been on a job interview to an IT company, and it sounds to me like a difficult assignment so why bother.

There is nothing wrong with keeping your dignity and telling your prospective employer "I'm not going to work for free. "

[Computergeek01]

@wtf: This posting isn't something to suspect is evil or dubious, I doubt it's even part of an job application process. This looks like "Crowd Sourcing" I imagine the OP got this posting off of Rentacoder.com or something.

[GulHK]

@WTF I think you are right because now you are not the only one who's said this and has asked me to with draw :D. I think I should let the company know that I no longer wish to proceed :D.

Thanks for your detailed reply :-)
Thanks Computergeek01 :-)