'\" '\" Copyright (c) 1990-1994 The Regents of the University of California '\" Copyright (c) 1994-1997 Sun Microsystems, Inc. '\" Copyright (c) 1998-1999 Scriptics Corporation '\" '\" See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution '\" of this file, and for a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES. '\" '\" RCS: @(#) $Id: tcltest.n,v 1.9 1999/12/22 00:41:13 hobbs Exp $ '\" .so man.macros .TH "Tcltest" n 8.2 Tcl "Tcl Built-In Commands" .BS '\" Note: do not modify the .SH NAME line immediately below! .SH NAME Tcltest \- Test harness support code and utilities .SH SYNOPSIS \fBpackage require tcltest ?1.0?\fP .sp \fB::tcltest::test \fIname desc ?constraint? script expectedAnswer\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::cleanupTests \fI?runningMultipleTests?\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::getMatchingTestFiles\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::loadTestedCommands\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::makeFile \fIcontents name\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::removeFile \fIname\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::makeDirectory \fIname\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::removeDirectory \fIname\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::viewFile \fIname\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::normalizeMsg \fImsg\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::bytestring \fIstring\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::saveState\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::restoreState\fR .sp \fB::tcltest::threadReap\fR .BE .SH DESCRIPTION .PP The \fBtcltest\fR package provides the user with utility tools for writing and running tests in the Tcl test suite. It can also be used to create a customized test harness for an extension. .PP The Tcl test suite consists of multiple .test files, each of which contains multiple test cases. Each test case consists of a call to the test command, which specifies the name of test, a short description, any constraints that apply to the test case, the script to be run, and expected results. See the sections \fI"Tests,"\fR \fI"Test Constraints,"\fR and \fI"Test Files and How to Run Them"\fR for more details. .PP It is also possible to add to this test harness to create your own customized test harness implementation. For more defails, see the section \fI"How to Customize the Test Harness"\fR. .PP This approach to testing was designed and initially implemented by Mary Ann May-Pumphrey of Sun Microsystems in the early 1990's. Many thanks to her for donating her work back to the public Tcl release. .SH COMMANDS .TP \fB::tcltest::test\fP \fIname desc ?constraints? script expectedAnswer\fR The \fB::tcltest::test\fR command runs\fIscript\fR and compares its result to \fIexpectedAnswer\fR. It prints an error message if the two do not match. If \fB::tcltest::verbose\fR contains "p" or "s", it also prints out a message if the test passed or was skipped. The test will be skipped if it doesn't match the \fB::tcltest::match\fR variable, if it matches an element in \fB::tcltest::skip\fR, or if one of the elements of \fIconstraint\fR turns out not to be true. The \fB::tcltest::test\fR command has no defined return values. See the \fI"Writing a new test"\fR section for more details on this command. .TP \fB::tcltest::cleanupTests\fP \fI?runningMultipleTests?\fR This command should be called at the end of a test file. It prints statistics about the tests run and removes files that were created by \fB::tcltest::makeDirectory\fR and \fB::tcltest::makeFile\fR. Names of files and directories created outside of \fB::tcltest::makeFile\fR and \fB::tcltest::makeDirectory\fR and never deleted are printed to \fB::tcltest::outputChannel\fR. This command also restores the original shell environment, as described by the ::env array. \fIcalledFromAll\fR should be specified when \fB::tcltest::cleanupTests\fR is called from an "all.tcl" file. Tcl files files are generally used to run multiple tests. For more details on how to run multiple tests, please see the section \fI"Running test files"\fR. This proc has no defined return value. .TP \fB::tcltest::getMatchingTestFiles\fP This command is used when you want to run multiple test files. It returns the list of tests that should be sourced in an 'all.tcl' file. See the section \fI"Running test files"\fR for more information. .TP \fB::tcltest::loadTestedCommands\fP This command uses the script specified via the \fI-load\fR or \fI-loadfile\fR to load the commands checked by the test suite. Allowed to be empty, as the tested commands could have been compiled into the interpreter running the test suite. .TP \fB::tcltest::makeFile\fP \fIcontents name\fR Create a file that will be automatically be removed by \fB::tcltest::cleanupTests\fR at the end of a test file. This proc has no defined return value. .TP \fB::tcltest::removeFile\fP \fIname\fR Force the file referenced by \fIname\fR to be removed. This file name should be relative to \fI::tcltest::temporaryDirectory\fR. This proc has no defined return values. .TP \fB::tcltest::makeDirectory\fP \fIname\fR Create a directory named \fIname\fR that will automatically be removed by \fB::tcltest::cleanupTests\fR at the end of a test file. This proc has no defined return value. .TP \fB::tcltest::removeDirectory\fP \fIname\fR Force the directory referenced by \fIname\fR to be removed. This proc has no defined return value. .TP \fB::tcltest::viewFile\fP \fIfile\fR Returns the contents of \fIfile\fR. .TP \fB::tcltest::normalizeMsg\fP \fImsg\fR Remove extra newlines from \fImsg\fR. .TP \fB::tcltest::bytestring\fP \fIstring\fR Construct a string that consists of the requested sequence of bytes, as opposed to a string of properly formed UTF-8 characters using the value supplied in \fIstring\fR. This allows the tester to create denormalized or improperly formed strings to pass to C procedures that are supposed to accept strings with embedded NULL types and confirm that a string result has a certain pattern of bytes. .TP \fB::tcltest::saveState\fP \fB::tcltest::restoreState\fP Save and restore the procedure and global variable names. A test file might contain calls to \fB::tcltest::saveState\fR and \fB::tcltest:restoreState\fR if it creates or deletes global variables or procs. .TP \fB::tcltest::threadReap\fP \fB::tcltest::threadReap\fR only works if \fItestthread\fR is defined, generally by compiling tcltest. If \fItestthread\fR is defined, \fB::tcltest::threadReap\fR kills all threads except for the main thread. It gets the ID of the main thread by calling \fItestthread names\fR during initialization. This value is stored in \fI::tcltest::mainThread\fR. \fB::tcltest::threadReap\fR returns the number of existing threads at completion. .SH TESTS The \fBtest\fR procedure runs a test script and prints an error message if the script's result does not match the expected result. The following is the spec for the \fBtest\fR command: .DS test ??