Challenge 1: "Write a script to demonstrate brace expansion. For example,
script would take command line argument Perl {Daily,Weekly,Monthly,Yearly}
Challenge and should expand it and print like below:

  Perl Daily Challenge
  Perl Weekly Challenge
  Perl Monthly Challenge
  Perl Yearly Challenge

My notes: Nested braces may be slightly tricky, first I tried a recursive
function to find and expand the innermost {}, but that produced the
right output in a weird order, with duplicates.
Instead, try a state machine to track the locations of the outer level
elements {,}.  Extract $before, $after and an array of alternatives @alt,
then recombine them, until there are no { left.


Challenge 2: "Write a script to demonstrate calling a C function. It
could be any user defined or standard C function."

My notes: Hmm, either XS or Inline::C.  I've never used either:-)
Wrote simple sqrt routine (algorithm: squaring the rectangle) in C,
wrote the same in Perl, then used Benchmark to benchmark both versions.