You're assuming this person has in-depth knowledge of shell commands. If that's what you're testing for then fine, but I wouldn't say it's a good measure of ov

You're assuming this person has in-depth knowledge of shell commands. If that's what you're testing for then fine, but I wouldn't say it's a good measure of over-engineering. They might have tons of python experience on Windows and haven't used grep in years, so that 100 line Python script might be the most efficient solution they can think of. Also, any interview where I'm expected to have memorized obscure shell flags and one-liners with no access to so much as a man page can go fuck itself. That's just an IT/DevOps spelling bee.