by Lore Sjöberg

Many people have written in asking us to provide a quiz that would test both their computer programming skills and their knowledge of commercial slogans. Actually, that's a lie, but we came up with this quiz and we thought it might be diverting nonetheless.

In the left column below you'll find snippets of fake computer code (pseudo-Perl, to be precise) based on famous ad slogans. In the right column, you tell us what product is being advertised. For example:

$substance = "NaCl";

while ($raining) {
    &pour($substance);
}

is pseudocode for "When it rains, it pours," so the answer would be Morton Salt. Got it? Go for it!

foreach $drop (@drops) {
    $flavor{$drop} = "good";
}

for $item (@items) {
    $moral_judgment = &analyze($item);
    if ($moral_judgment eq "good") {
        &vivify("us",$item);
    }
}

$number_served > (1e9 * 2) + (1e9 * 2);

do { &activity; }
exit;

while (time < $selling_time) {
    next;
}

&sell($product);

if (pop()) {
    while (1) { # infinite loop
        pop();
    }
}