From what I've seen, reversing strings, etc. is one of the most popular algorithmic questions in tech interviews. In fact, a few years ago when I was getting advice from more seasoned programmers regarding my very first tech interview, each one said that I should review how to reverse strings (or particular words in a string).

The problem I have with it is, there are generally really easy ways to do it (in C++, you'd only need to be familiar with the string library). Plus, most begining programming books seem to give examples of how to do things like this. I guess it just seems to me that questions like this don't so much test a person's ability to think logically, but rather how well they've read their begining programming book, or whether they've had a reason to look through libraries, etc.

ivory