> Is this why the applicants I see that are fresh out of college > with their shiny new computer science degrees can't seem to > code their way out of a wet paper bag?
Well, there you go! Apparently, your wet paper bag has no "detect a palendrome" exit. While you're installing such an egress to your soggy dead-tree satchel, you could also provide similar "write a binary search" or "write your own linked-list implementation" escape hatches... :) -tkc -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list