[Python-Dev] Cleaning-up the new unittest API

[R. David Murray]

On Sat, 30 Oct 2010 18:36:45 +0200, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Oct 2010 12:02:27 -0400
> "R. David Murray" <rdmurray at bitdance.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I don't disagree with this simplification, but given that you all want
> > to pare down the unittest API, I'd be interested in your opinions on
> > issue 10164.  Because the assertBytesEqual method takes an optional
> > argument, it seems like it would need to be documented, even though
> > it would in a lot of cases just be used through assertEqual.
> 
> The optional argument doesn't look very useful. I imagine there are
> plenty of special cases where you could need custom splitting of
> bytestrings on a given byte, a regexp pattern, or along some fixed
> chunk length, but they are special cases.

Well, I have a specific special case I need it for:  comparing byte
strings that are wire-format email messages.  Considering how much of
a pain it was to get right, I'd hate to see people have to reimplement
the guts of it for each special case.  Maybe a 'make_chunks' argument
that takes a function that returns a list?

--
R. David Murray                                      www.bitdance.com