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How do you write a unit test that tries to assert that no one calls the function sqrt with a negative integer? Because that is precisely the case where pre-cond

by rapala 13y ago

How do you write a unit test that tries to assert that no one calls the function sqrt with a negative integer? Because that is precisely the case where pre-conditions can help.

thinkpad20 13y ago
You don't write unit tests to assert that a function never gets called a certain way. You can't, in a dynamic language: a function could conceivably be called with anything, and even in a statically typed language, there are some functions which cannot be determined at compile-time never to terminate without error. (For example, if you're using signed integers, the input could be negative). The goal of unit testing in this case is to ensure assert that if that happens, your code does what you expect it to, whether that's fail with a nice error message, return some default value, or simply bomb out. Depending on what context that function occurs in, it might be guaranteed to never happen (e.g. sqrt is only ever called by function foo, and foo always calls abs on its input before calling sqrt.). In those cases, it's not necessary to write those assertions into sqrt. You should separate what's actually subject to variability at runtime vs what can be ensured by program flow, and write unit tests accordingly. There's nothing wrong with the kind of assertions/preconditions described above, but I remain skeptical that they offer anything fundamentally stronger than a comprehensive suite of unit tests.
- rapala 13y ago
  I agree that contracts don't offer something stronger than unit test. They offer something different. Of course you can't write the unit test that I asked and that was the point. But it would be kind of pointless too to write the test that checks that an exception is thrown when sqrt is called with a negative argument. It's trivial to see that happens by looking at the code. How sqrt fails is not interesting either, as you are not supposed to recover from that. A pre-condition is a way to specify that. It says: "Don't call me with a negative argument, just don't."

by rapala 13y ago

How do you write a unit test that tries to assert that no one calls the function sqrt with a negative integer? Because that is precisely the case where pre-conditions can help.

thinkpad20 13y ago

You don't write unit tests to assert that a function never gets called a certain way. You can't, in a dynamic language: a function could conceivably be called with anything, and even in a statically typed language, there are some functions which cannot be determined at compile-time never to terminate without error. (For example, if you're using signed integers, the input could be negative). The goal of unit testing in this case is to ensure assert that if that happens, your code does what you expect it to, whether that's fail with a nice error message, return some default value, or simply bomb out. Depending on what context that function occurs in, it might be guaranteed to never happen (e.g. sqrt is only ever called by function foo, and foo always calls abs on its input before calling sqrt.). In those cases, it's not necessary to write those assertions into sqrt. You should separate what's actually subject to variability at runtime vs what can be ensured by program flow, and write unit tests accordingly. There's nothing wrong with the kind of assertions/preconditions described above, but I remain skeptical that they offer anything fundamentally stronger than a comprehensive suite of unit tests.

rapala 13y ago
I agree that contracts don't offer something stronger than unit test. They offer something different. Of course you can't write the unit test that I asked and that was the point. But it would be kind of pointless too to write the test that checks that an exception is thrown when sqrt is called with a negative argument. It's trivial to see that happens by looking at the code. How sqrt fails is not interesting either, as you are not supposed to recover from that. A pre-condition is a way to specify that. It says: "Don't call me with a negative argument, just don't."