On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:53:45 -0700, Herman wrote: > I am trying to stick to the rule described in the TDD book that, each > test method name consists of the method name to be tested, inputs and > the expected outputs.
*The* TDD book? There's only one? Surely not. That rule sounds utterly impractical. I can't think of anything to recommend it. Like any other function, method or class, tests should have meaningful names, but reading the name alone should not necessarily tell you *everything* about the function. We have "len", not "len_sequence_or_mapping_int", and similarly it is perfectly reasonable to have "test_len_empty" rather than "test_len_emptylist_emptystr_emptyunicode_emptydict_emptyset_emptytuple_zero". I expect that naming rule was invented by either people who have heard of test driven development, but never actually done it, or by people so anally-retentive that if they make seven short car trips over an hour, they check the tyre pressure, oil and water seven times because "the manual says to check before *every* trip". No offence. My advice is to moderate the naming convention of your tests with a good dose of common sense and aim for names which are readable rather than names that contain everything including the kitchen sink. Imagine you are in a technical meeting with some of your fellow programmers, and need to ask for help with a failing test. Imagine saying the name of the test aloud in a sentence. Does it add clarity to the discussion, or obfuscate it? People's short term memory can only hold so much (allegedly "seven plus or minus two"), and if the name itself hits that limit, you leave nothing left for the rest of the sentence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two Names should be practically, rather than conforming to some naming rule that hurts readability and obfuscates the tests. > It takes up a lot of space and my company has a > rule of limiting 79 characters (or 80) per line. I found that def > abcdeef\ > dddaaa(self): > pass > > does not work, but > def \ > abcsajfoijfiawifoiwejfoi(self): > pass > > works. Is this the only way to do it? Yes. You can't split tokens over multiple lines, or put any whitespace between them. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
