[plug] Mistakes on your "Sample exam"

[Garth Atkinson]

Hello Greg

You missed Question 3.1B.

3.1b     Which one of the following is the correct command to store
all of the contents of all files in the present working directory (or
pwd) into a single new file called 'all_in_one'? 

A.   cat * > all_in_one 
B.   cp * all_in_one 
C.   cat * >> all_in_one 
D.   All of the above 
E.   Both A and C 

They mark E as being the correct answer. Only A will do that all of the
time. They dont stipulate which shell is in use. If the Csh was in use,
and 'noclobber' was set (quite common) then C would fail. These sort of
exceptions make it very difficult to construct questions where only one
answer is correct. They even ask for in some of the questions the best
answer (????).

Garth


Greg Mildenhall wrote:
> 
> Dear Sir/Madam,
> 
> You seem to have a couple of mistakes on this page, or perhaps the cgi:
> http://www.linuxcertification.org/quizzes/Level1Quiz/
> 
> For 1.1.a, both A. and B. were certainly true at different stages of early
> computing history. A. happened earlier, so it probably a better answer
> then B, which you suggest.
> 
> In part 1.2.b, you say that
> "If free software is included in products and services being sold, only
> verbatim copies software can be redistributed."
> 
> Aside from the missing "of the", the statement is factually wrong, (the
> question is in the context of the GPL, which certainly permits
> modification) but of course so is C. so A. is unfortunately considered an
> incorrect answer. D. looks like it should be a valid answer, too, but the
> wording is not clear enough to be sure what it really means.
> 
> In 5.1.a, you claim that the statement "Man pages are not found in some
> distributions of Linux? " is false. Oooops. There are plenty of
> distributions without manpages, mostly embedded ones.
> 
> A final quibble, if I may - I think 2.3 would benefit from specifying
> "copying the OS software TO THE HARDDRIVE" in part C, otherwise it is more
> likely to be interpreted as making a backup of the installation media.
> I can only guess that this is what you mean in the question, but the
> question seems fairly trivial if that is indeed the meaning you intend for
> C. Response A. 1.2.C probably needs a rewording too, to make it clear you
> are talking about linking, as opposed to releasing under multiuple
> licenses.
> 
> I hope this feedback helps you to improve your service - I feel it is a
> necessary one for both the Linux community and the business world.
> 
> -Greg Mildenhall