[Python-Dev] PEP: Frequently-requested additional features for the `unittest` module

[Brett Cannon]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 7:05 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> Scott Dial <scott+python-dev at scottdial.com> writes:
>
>> Why [introduce redundant test names]?
>>
>> assert_not_less_than = assert_greater_than_or_equal
>> assert_not_greater_than = assert_less_than_or_equal
>> assert_not_less_than_or_equal = assert_greater_than
>> assert_not_greater_than_or_equal = assert_less_than
>
> To answer the question: The above tests are logically equivalent, but
> the failure message would be different, reporting failure in terms of
> what the caller wanted to test.
>
> I se your point though. I'd like to see what others think on this
> issue.
>
>> Besides, ``assert_not_greater_than_or_equal`` is god-awful-long,
>> along with the complaints about PEP-8-ifying. I wonder if it would
>> be better to abbreviate these names with the *same name* that was
>> used for the attribute in the operator module. Let's not reinvent
>> the wheel here..
>
> Interesting. So you advocate collapsing the above eight tests into the
> following four:
>
>    assert_lt
>    assert_gt
>    assert_le
>    assert_ge

Is any of this really necessary? Isn't this the equivalent of
``assert_(a < b)``? It seems like the only thing you get out of this
is a nicer error message, but ``assert_(a < b, 'not %r <= %s' % (a,
b))`` is not that complex. And do these cases really come up that
often? I would want to see some numbers showing that these are really
necessary (in both usage and people even specifying an error message
in the first place).

-Brett