[Python-Dev] PEP: Consolidating names and classes in the unittest module (updated 2008-07-15) (original) (raw)

Ben Finney ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Wed Jul 16 00:34:00 CEST 2008

"C. Titus Brown" <ctb at msu.edu> writes:

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 03:00:30PM +0100, Richard Thomas wrote: -> I've been told by a couple of non-programmers that "failUnless" -> is more intuitive than "assert" if only for the reason that its -> unclear what "assert" might do. This is similar to one of the -> arguments raised in the PEP, but considered from the point of -> view of someone new to test frameworks it could be all the more -> important.

Maybe this is an unnecessarily hard line, but if someone doesn't know what "assert" does, then they should go look up the keyword -- it's part of Python (and present in C, C++, Perl, and PHP as well). So unless the person is new to Python AND testing, they should know it.

That's exactly the problem with the 'assert*' names: The test methods of TestCase don't do the same thing as the Python 'assert' statement, and aren't meant to. The association is confusing, even (especially?) if one knows what the 'assert' statement does.

While I don't have a strong position on the assert* vs fail*, I think consistency and simplicity in test suites is at least as important as in code: if you have to work hard to understand and debug your test suites, you've done something seriously wrong in building your tests.

Yes. While I prefer the 'fail*' names, I would prefer to lose either of 'assert*' or 'fail*' than to retain redundant names in the API.

-- \ “If I had known what it would be like to have it all... I might | `\ have been willing to settle for less.” —Jane Wagner, via Lily | o_) Tomlin | Ben Finney

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