that's actually not so bad. the interviewer was asking theory and procedure questions, not 'how would you write a regex for LaTeX to HTML parsing?' (god, i thought i asked bad questions!)

there's really no way to prepare, unless you're going to get a round of phone interviews, and you can brush up on the weaknesses that the first interviewer uncovered.

phone interviews, at least the way my company uses them, are just quick screens ( ~ 20 minutes ) to see how extensive someone's perl knowledge is. i ask questions about OO-perl ( and look for textbook answers - that at least shows that someone has read about it, if not worked with it), namespaces, use vs. require, module use ( this question does show a lot about coding style), and similar theory-based questions. and they seem to work just fine.