"the correct solution" implies that there is one particular correct solution - there are a lot of options, and I'd accept any answer if the candidate can come u

"the correct solution" implies that there is one particular correct solution - there are a lot of options, and I'd accept any answer if the candidate can come up with a reasonable justification for it. One example would be to process the data in fixed-size chunks of eg 1KB instead of trying to process the entire file at once. Pros: no matter how weirdly malformed your data is, your memory use is constant. Cons: what if that 1KB boundary line cuts a word in half? - then the candidate can either handle that new edge case, or switch to a different approach that doesn't suffer from that problem. Again, either option is valid if they have a solid explanation for what they are doing and why they are doing it.