Ctrl K
Python · Senior · Coding

There's a log file of tens of gigabytes; each line contains, separated by spaces, the timestamp, method, path, status, and response time in milliseconds. Write a function top_error_paths that takes the file path and a number k and returns the k paths with the most 5xx responses, along with how many malformed lines were skipped.

~15 min by voice

How to approach it

They're checking whether you can process a file that doesn't fit in memory: read it as a stream, robustly against garbage in the data, with memory that depends on the number of keys rather than the size of the input. Plus carefulness: exact 5xx filtering, counting malformed lines, clarifying requirements before coding.

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Answer by voice

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Best with headphones · ~15 min