Author: Stan Eisenstat
Subject: Testing your code
Date: Friday, 02 Oct 2020, 10:30:24

As I pointed out in the specification for fiend:

  You may use the script /c/cs323/bin/tester to run your own tests.

Here is the description;

  # Run all tests in directory BASE for which the expected output ends in .SUFFIX
  #
  # Example:
  #
  #   % tester /c/cs323/Hwk1/Tests t
  #
  # will run every executable file in the directory /c/cs323/Hwk1/Tests for which
  # there is a corresponding file with suffix .t.  That is, if BAD is such an
  # executable file and there is a file named BAD.t, then tester will execute
  # BAD, capturing the standard output and standard error, and run diff on
  # the captured output/error and BAD.t.

Creating a test can be as simple as

  % cat > BAD  << END ; chmod +x BAD
  ./parsley <<HERE
  Can you parse a sequence of TEXT tokens correctly?
  HERE
  END

and /c/cs323/Hwk2/parsley can be used to create the .t file.

As for constructing tests, I posted the following on September 3rd:

  Here is some advice for finding edge cases:
   
  * Read the specification, very carefully, line by line, looking
    for words like "should" or "must" and active verbs.
   
  * Look at the public test cases to see what they do NOT test
    but might have.
   
Best,

--Stan-