How to stump college graduates... (Score 2)

I can understand if you're frustrated that college graduates can't write a routine to print a number in octal, but if you're only allowing them to use printf, that's insane. College isn't a place where a student should learn all the useless minutae of various languages -- that's what reference manuals are for. College is more about theory than "practical knowledge", and I doubt knowing how to use printf to print octal numbers even counts as "practical".