[Tutor] problems with doctest: apparent interferance between tests (LONG)

[Brian van den Broek]

Kent Johnson said unto the world upon 2005-04-10 15:11:
> As John Ridley suggests, you have to balance creation and deletion of 
> Wall_clock instances. But unfortunately del wc does not necessarily call 
> Wall_clock.__del__() immediately.


Hi Kent and all,

OK, the delay between the statement del(wc) and the call of
Wall_clock.__del__() helps explain a good deal. Thanks for pointing
that out!

> See below for more...
> 
> Brian van den Broek wrote:
> 
>>     def check_point(self, check_point_name = None):
>>         '''Creates a new _Check_point instance; appends it to .data.

<SNIP>

>>         >>> new_wclock = Wall_clock()  # This passes
> 
> 
> You need a matching del new_wclock() here.
> 
>>         '''
>
>>     def interval(self, interval_name = None):
>>         '''
<SNIP>
>>         >>> same_name = wclock.interval('F')
>>         Traceback (most recent call last):
>>             ...
>>         Interval_name_conflictError
> 
> 
> You need a matching del wclock here. BUT it still doesn't work because 
> __del__() doesn't get called.
> 
> If you read the Note under the description of __del__() on this page
> http://docs.python.org/ref/customization.html
> it says that in the case of an exception, references are retained in the 
> stack track object. I tried the workarounds suggested with no luck. but 
> taking out the line that causes the exception (and adding the missing 
> del) does in fact make the test work.


OK, that's helpful; thanks. Making the changes you suggest does indeed
fix the failure problem. :-)

But: it still leaves me wondering why removing either a) the one-line
no-doctest-containing docstring of the Wall_clock class or b) the
unreferenced Wall_clock.stop_interval method made my original test
code pass without needing to effect the changes you suggest. That
seems really odd to me.

> As far as doctests being independent, each doctest has it's own copy 
> globals(). But your class has its own internal state, this is not 
> affected by globals(). Basically there are side-effects to the use of 
> your class; doctest can't account for them.

I've not fully grokked the doctest code (which I delved into after Lee
Harr suggested I do so), but I would have thought that each doctest
had its own copy of the Wall_clock class from copying globals. But
here, I surely have more work to do myself :-)


> Personally I don't see any compelling reason why Wall_clock() should be 
> a singleton. It could easily be a module with global functions and 
> global state, or you could allow clients to have multiple instances to 
> time different things.

I'm not sure I see a reason anymore, either. :-)

The code that I removed before posting allows for multiple things to
be timed, but all timings are relative to the first instantiation of
the Wall_clock class. _Check_points, on creation, store how many
seconds have elapsed since the Wall_clock instance was created,
_Intervals how long between their start and stop signals, as well as
how long from Wall_clock instance creation their start signal was
sent. The thought was that the results would be easier to interpret
were all timings relative to a single initiation point, rather than
having timings of instance 1 relative to instance 1's initiation, and
instance 2's relative to its.

 From a usability standpoint, I think I have settled on a Borg, where
the first instances start time is the one to which all timings will be
relative.

But, in a way, which route is best is something of a side issue
(though I do appreciate the input). I took this up to primarily to
explore various possible structures just for learning about them.

So, apart from the open questions (about why the unreferenced method
and the no-doctest class docstring made a difference), I think I can
count my original problem solved. I know how to make my tests work as
excepted, and that is the main thing.

Sincere thanks to everyone who worked their way through my mammoth
original post; I very much appreciate the contributions!

Best to all,

Brian vdB