Data-driven testing

[Aahz]

In article <SXcqa.6797$K35.186991 at news2.tin.it>,
Alex Martelli  <aleax at aleax.it> wrote:
>
>"rm throwaway.py" has clearly miniscule benefits in most cases, and
>the potential cost is obvious -- if you're wrong, and next week
>need that same functionality again, you're going to have to write
>and possibly debug it again.  Leaving your hard-disk strewn with
>dusty old code, however, is quite sub-optimal too -- any single
>given script matters little, but cumulatively they may make things
>untidy indeed.  Keeping your "probably throwaway scripts" in their
>own folder[s] is a good move -- and so is writing SOME docs about
>what it IS that they do, even just a couple lines worth of docstring.

I've got one throwaway script, called x.py.  Any time I need to write a
throwaway script, I edit that file, deleting the current contents first.
(I'll admit that I do usually have multiple instances of that file in
different directories, but the ones in directories get used strictly for
the projects in those directories -- my standard is the one in my home
directory.)
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"In many ways, it's a dull language, borrowing solid old concepts from
many other languages & styles:  boring syntax, unsurprising semantics,
few automatic coercions, etc etc.  But that's one of the things I like
about it."  --Tim Peters on Python, 16 Sep 93