Mark Janssen wrote:

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

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On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 7:57 AM, Mark Janssen wrote:

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Anyway... of course patches welcome, yes... ;^) Not really. doctest is for *testing code example in docs*.

I understand. This is exactly what I was wanting to use it for. As Tim says "literate testing" or "executable documentation".

The suggestions I made are for enhancing those two.

Personally, I don't find unittest very suitable for test-driven *development*, although it *is* obviously well-suited for writing assurance tests otherwise.

I like unittest for TDD.

The key difference, to me, is in that doctest promotes tests being written in order to have the *additional functionality* of documentation. That makes it fun since your getting "twice the value for the cost of one", and that alone is the major item which drives test-driven development (IMHO) within the spirit of python, otherwise unittest is rather bulky to write in and of itself.

unittest can be a bit bulky, but definitely worth it IMO, especially when covering the corner cases. I have not used doctest, but I can say that I strongly dislike having more than one or two examples in a docstring. Having all possibilities (including corner cases) in a separate file I am okay with (as that would be documentation -- when I'm reading code I want to see code, and I'll look up the docs if I have a question). The other gripe I have (possibly easily fixed): my python prompt is '-->' (makes email posting easier) -- should my doctests still use '>>>'? Will doctest fail on my machine?

Does anyone really use unittest outside the context of shop policy?

Yup.

Mark Janssen writes:

The key difference, to me, is in that doctest promotes tests being written in order to have the *additional functionality* of documentation.

I think that doctest promotes docstrings being written with the additional functionality of tests. To that extent, it is very good. -- \ “The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the | `\ world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports | _o__) the strong probability that yours is a fake.” —Henry L. Mencken | Ben Finney