>"what is the difference between $var, @var, and %var"

Boy, that IS lame... But I totally agree. Thank god perl has a very steep learning curve, which on your comment comes to proove that the guys you interviewed actually knew close to nothing.

On buzzcutbuddha's case (and where the hell did you come up with THAT nickname?) he has a big advantage which is previous programming knowledge. If you can code, you can most definitely learn perl very fast. And in the end, aren't we all still learning? (well maybe not btrott, vroom and chromatic :o))