Test/Harness

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (3)
Updated: perl 5.003 with
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

Test::Harness - run perl standard test scripts with statistics

SYNOPSIS

use Test::Harness;

runtests(@tests);

DESCRIPTION

Perl test scripts print to standard output "ok N" for each single test, where N is an increasing sequence of integers. The first line output by a standard test scxript is "1..M" with M being the number of tests that should be run within the test script. Test::Harness::runscripts(@tests) runs all the testscripts named as arguments and checks standard output for the expected "ok N" strings.

After all tests have been performed, runscripts() prints some performance statistics that are computed by the Benchmark module.

The test script output

Any output from the testscript to standard error is ignored and bypassed, thus will be seen by the user. Lines written to standard output that look like perl comments (start with /^\s*\#/) are discarded. Lines containing /^(not\s+)?ok\b/ are interpreted as feedback for runtests().

It is tolerated if the test numbers after ok are omitted. In this case Test::Harness maintains temporarily its own counter until the script supplies test numbers again. So the following test script

    print <<END;
    1..6
    not ok
    ok
    not ok
    ok
    ok
    END

will generate

    FAILED tests 1, 3, 6
    Failed 3/6 tests, 50.00% okay

The global variable $Test::Harness::verbose is exportable and can be used to let runscripts() display the standard output of the script without altering the behavior otherwise.

EXPORT

&runscripts is exported by Test::Harness per default.

DIAGNOSTICS

All tests successful.\nFiles=%d, Tests=%d, %s: If all tests are successful some statistics about the performance are printed.
FAILED tests %s\n\tFailed %d/%d tests, %.2f%% okay.: For any single script that has failing subtests statistics like the above are printed.
Test returned status %d (wstat %d): Scripts that return a non-zero exit status, both $?>>8 and $? are printed in a message similar to the above.
Failed 1 test, %.2f%% okay. %s
Failed %d/%d tests, %.2f%% okay. %s: If not all tests were successful, the script dies with one of the above messages.

AUTHORS

Either Tim Bunce or Andreas Koenig, we don't know. What we know for sure is, that it was inspired by Larry Wall's TEST script that came with perl distributions for ages. Current maintainer is Andreas Koenig.

BUGS

Test::Harness uses $^X to determine the perl binary to run the tests with. Test scripts running via the shebang (#!) line may not be portable because $^X is not consistent for shebang scripts across platforms. This is no problem when Test::Harness is run with an absolute path to the perl binary or when $^X can be found in the path.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 15:34:43 GMT, January 15, 2023