use Perl

• Testing against implentations (Score:1)

  by Dom2 (2981)

  One of my beefs about perl is that it doesn't come with a good interactive environment (unlike python). I frequently test things against an implementation, just to see whether something works or not; I usually go to the documentation afterwords. :-)

  I must say though, that hash slices are one of those things that I nearly always avoid if possible; they're just too visually cluttered.
  • Re:Testing against implentations (Score:1)

    by pudge (1) on 2002.06.18 10:15 (#9673) Homepage Journal

    I don't understand what you mean. Yes, there is perl -d, as mentioned, and you can always use perl -e itself, too. But not knowing what you mean, I can't say if these are sufficient to your desires.
    
    Testing is sometimes a problem. For testing Slash, I wrote Slash::Test, which exports the four major objects, Dumper(), the entire API, all the constants, all the available plugin objects, etc. so I can do stuff like:

    % perl -MSlash::Test=useperl -e 'print Dumper $slashdb->getUserFoo($user->{uid})'

    Everything I need is right there, so I don't need to bother setting it up, and testing little snippets is very simple. I can test templates, too:

    % perl -MSlash::Test=useperl -eDisplay
    [% USE Dumper; Dumper.dump( Slash.db.getUserFoo(user.uid) ) %]
    ^D

    etc.
    
    Testing environments are important, but if perl doesn't have one you need, it's not too hard to write one to suit your own purposes.
    
    As to hash slices, I use them sparingly, usually only when other methods are more cluttered.
    

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