This isn't "How's your Perl?", it's "How's your ObfuPerl?"

Nevertheless this test is a good way to found out if you really know Perl intimately. You don't need to know all Perl to answer these questions in order to be a professional Perl coder that makes mission critical business applications, but that does not mean this test is useless.

None of this is useful for someone looking to test Perl skills. But it was properly labelled as a "waste of time"

Not just waste of time, but waste of time in our effort against sanity. We want you to break your brain cells over this. Your current lazy attitude is not really appreciated and we think you're afraid to admit you are not an [insert awesome title here].

I'm just thinking that it may put off anyone not familiar with the weird on-line Perl community.

Your inability to not understand what this is all about is probably not shared by the people who come here unbiased. They will probably read the introduction, which I quote for you here, with my emphasis added:

As part of our continuing crusade against sanity, we of #perlhelp (EFnet) have created a modest perl quiz to test for all the skills required to make the maintainance programmer voluntarily leap into the gaping chasm of madness. We hope it will reinforce everyone's appreciation of our favorite language, by itself and as a tool towards this noble goal.

;-)

I hope you understand now. We do this not for fun, but for a greater good.

Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', plp_site => 'plp.juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap' }