Microsoft internship…part II

This is sequel to the post

http://ashishjain.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/microsoft-internshipsome-vodka-please/

Round 1: Written round
The results to the written C Apti round were announced overnight. 27 people out of 101 got selected. Here are the questions of the C apti:

a)A recurssions problem, just needed some patience

b)given a function parser(char *) which parses the input string. Write all the possbile test cases for it.

c)You have been given a memory space to work with.You only know its base address and size. You cannot use more memory. Write a function for Void * Allocate(int ) and void Delete(Void *)

d)Given two linked lists, each conatining a digit of a very  long number. Subtract the two numbers and return a linked list which contains the difference, with each node containing one digit

The questions required some thinking and the implementations were not rigourously tested.Not very tough, but a challenging round

Round 2:Logic and implementation
The next round was a group process. 27 members were divided into groups of 4 each, each group having a mentor. All of them were made to be seated in a single room.The process was simple. One question would be given and everyone has to think about its implementation and discuss the answer with his/her mentor. When the mentor gives the go ahead, you have to implement it after which the mentor would check your code and give test conditions.

There were two such questions with half an hour each for each question. The questions were as follows:

a)Given input binary tree and a number, find the path from the root to leaves such that the path sum is equal to the given number

b)Given input a Char *.It contains alphanumeric + special symbols. Every special symbol has to be replced by”_(its ASCII)_”

for example, assume ASCII of $ is 32(I dont remember the exact values, its a pain to remember ASCII table), then

Input: A$BED

Output String:A_32_BED

The constraint here being only limited additional memory being available which is exactly equal to accomodate the new string and that extra memory is available only at the end of the given string. You cannot create a new string, you have to work on existing string.

This round was doable and challenging. It was fun, I thoroughly enjoyed it.12 out of 27 people got selected

Round 3: Personal Interviews
The next round was personal interview.It was a 1 on 1 interview. I was asked only 1 question and we were discussing the same question for 50 mins.This varied with person to person.I got enough indications I wouldn’t be able to get past this round as I was encountering more problems, one after the other, in the implementation I choose.The question was pretty straightfoward though:

Given two arrays as input. Array a contains integers. Array b contains the indices of array a which needs to be deleted.

I was trying to implement a solution with complexity o(n), and the logical complexity became very high and the interviewer was not very impressed with it.

8 out of 12 people were selected to the next round.This will be after end sems, which is a pain to those who got selected as they may have to stay back during holidays and have been asked to go through the basics.

This is pretty much the entire procedure.The interviewers were very friendly.A very good experience.The entire process was just too much fun I wanna write more just for the heck of it