It is just an example of a dead simple 10-line programming task to verify that someone knows the language syntax, conditional, iteration or recursion, and refer

It is just an example of a dead simple 10-line programming task to verify that someone knows the language syntax, conditional, iteration or recursion, and references/pointers. Posing a complex domain-specific unsolved (or else it would be in a library!) problem that requires using library functions just wastes time and adds clutter to a quick coiding sanity check.