As we already know about the cmp_ok function of Test::More we can quickly write a test script using it:

use strict;
use warnings;

use MyTools;

use Test::More tests => 2 * 4;

for (1..4) {
    my $value = dice();
    cmp_ok $value, '>=', 1, 'bigger than 1';
    cmp_ok $value, '<=', 6, 'smaller than 6';
}

We run the script using perl -Ilib t/dice_cmp_ok.t and get the following output:

1..8
ok 1 - bigger than 1
ok 2 - smaller than 6
ok 3 - bigger than 1
ok 4 - smaller than 6
ok 5 - bigger than 1
ok 6 - smaller than 6
ok 7 - bigger than 1
ok 8 - smaller than 6

Everything looks ok. We ship the product.

Then the bug reports start to arrive. People complaining about strange behavior. As if the die was broken. After long hours of running after the bug we decide to amend the above test script by a call to diag $value; to see the real values returned by the dice() function. To our surprise we see values such as 1.5, 2.5, etc.

We can now run and fix the bug in our application, but before we do that, we should also improve our test script. We need a way to check if $value returns one of the values: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

List::MoreUtils any

We can use the built in grep function as follows:

if (grep { $value == $_ } (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)) {
}

Even though the code looks exactly the same, it is probably more expressive to use the any function provided by List::MoreUtils.

use List::MoreUtils qw(any);

if (any { $value == $_ } (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)) {
}

We can use these expressions in our test script as follows:

use strict;
use warnings;

use MyTools;

use List::MoreUtils qw(any);

use Test::More tests => 4;

for (1..4) {
    my $value = dice();
    ok( (any {$_ eq $value} (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)), 'correct number');
}

Running this will result in the following output:

1..4
not ok 1 - correct number
#   Failed test 'correct number'
#   at t/dice_any.t line 14.
ok 2 - correct number
not ok 3 - correct number
#   Failed test 'correct number'
#   at t/dice_any.t line 14.
ok 4 - correct number
# Looks like you failed 2 tests of 4.

OK, so we can now see that there is some problem, but we cannot yet see the actual results. We could add back the diag $value; as we did earlier, but there is really no point in printing out the value in every case. Only in case of failure.

Provide failure diagnostics

All the test-functions provided by Test::More return their truth-value. That is, they will return either true or false. We can use this information to improve our test script. We use the short-circuiting feature of the or operator to execute some code only when a specific test case failed. In that case we call diag and print out the received value.

use strict;
use warnings;

use MyTools;

use List::MoreUtils qw(any);

use Test::More tests => 4;

for (1..4) {
    my $value = dice();
    ok( (any {$_ eq $value} (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)), 'correct number')
        or diag "Received: $value\n";
}

Running this test script will generate the following output:

1..4
not ok 1 - correct number
#   Failed test 'correct number'
#   at t/dice_any_diag.t line 16.
# Received: 1.5
ok 2 - correct number
ok 3 - correct number
ok 4 - correct number
# Looks like you failed 1 test of 4.

This is much better. Now we can go and fix the dice() function and our test will work much better than earlier. (We are still unlikely to actually encounter one of the problematic cases, so we might prefer to run the above test 100 times and not only 4 times.)

The 8-sided dice

What if our marketing team comes to the conclusion that we need to generalize the dice() function and let it handle dice with all kinds of sizes? As developers we'll have to provide a solution for the dice() function itself, but as a tester we need to be able to test it.

The decision is that calling dice($N) with any number will return a random whole number between 1 .. $N. Testing this is simple for specific values of $N. We just need to copy-paste our previous solution:

use strict;
use warnings;

use MyTools;

use List::MoreUtils qw(any);

use Test::More tests => 4*2;

for (1..4) {
    my $value = dice(6);
    ok( (any {$_ eq $value} (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)), 'correct number')
        or diag "Received: $value\n";
}

for (1..4) {
    my $value = dice(8);
    ok( (any {$_ eq $value} (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)), 'correct number')
        or diag "Received: $value\n";
}

Besides the fact that we now have a lot of duplicated code, when we receive a failed test we'll have to rely on line numbers to know if this was a 6-sided dice or an 8-sided dice. It would be much better to print the expectation as well. Given that each list of expected numbers is between 1 and some $N, we could change our code to say so in words:

    ok( (any {$_ eq $value} (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)), 'correct number')
        or diag "Received: $value\nExpected number between 1-6\n";

That would work, but we would still have a lot of copies of the same code and we have a chance to solve a much more interesting problem. What if the list of values is not numbers from 1 to some $N, but some arbitrary list of values? In that case, the information about the expected values should list all the expected values. In order to make it easier we put the expected values in an array and use it both with the any function and when printing the expected values. We have also replaced the == operator with the eq operator in the any expression. It does not have an effect on our case of numbers between 1..$N, but it provides a more generic way to compare scalar values.

my @expected = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6);

for (1..4) {
    my $value = dice();
    ok( (any {$_ eq $value} @expected), 'correct number')
        or diag "Received: $value\nExpected:\n" .
            join "", map {"         $_\n"} @expected;
}

The full code then looks like this:

use strict;
use warnings;

use MyTools;

use List::MoreUtils qw(any);

use Test::More tests => 4*2;

my @expected = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6);

for (1..4) {
    my $value = dice(6);
    ok( (any {$_ eq $value} @expected), 'correct number')
        or diag "Received: $value\nExpected:\n" .
            join "", map {"         $_\n"} @expected;
}

my @expected = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8);

for (1..4) {
    my $value = dice(8);
    ok( (any {$_ eq $value} @expected), 'correct number')
        or diag "Received: $value\nExpected:\n" .
            join "", map {"         $_\n"} @expected;
}

The output from this code looks like this:

1..4
not ok 1 - correct number
#   Failed test 'correct number'
#   at t/dice_any_diag.t line 16.
# Received: 1.5
# Expected:
#          1
#          2
#          3
#          4
#          5
#          6
ok 2 - correct number
ok 3 - correct number
ok 4 - correct number
ok 5 - correct number
ok 6 - correct number
not ok 7 - correct number
#   Failed test 'correct number'
#   at t/dice_any_diag.t line 24.
# Received: 3.5
# Expected:
#          1
#          2
#          3
#          4
#          5
#          6
#          7
#          8
ok 8 - correct number
# Looks like you failed 2 test of 8.

Next time we'll do some refactoring and wrap the 3 lines of code:

    ok( (any {$_ eq $value} @expected), 'correct number')
        or diag "Received: $value\nExpected:\n" .
            join "", map {"         $_\n"} @expected;

in a generic function.