[Python-Dev] unittest missing assertNotRaises (original) (raw)

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Wed Sep 28 13:04:06 CEST 2011

On 27/09/2011 19:46, Wilfred Hughes wrote:

Hi folks

I wasn't sure if this warranted a bug in the tracker, so I thought I'd raise it here first. unittest has assertIn, assertNotIn, assertEqual, assertNotEqual and so on. So, it seems odd to me that there isn't assertNotRaises. Is there any particular motivation for not putting it in? I've attached a simple patch against Python 3's trunk to give an idea of what I have in mind.

As others have said, the opposite of assertRaises is just calling the code!

I have several times needed regression tests that call code that used to raise an exception. It can look slightly odd to have a test without an assert, but the singular uselessness of assertNotRaises does not make it a better alternative. I usually add a comment:

def test_something_that_used_to_not_work(self): # this used to raise an exception do_something()

All the best,

Michael Foord

Thanks Wilfred

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