The best way to do this is with a test suite. Testing your returns and input at run-time will cause performance degradation, and make it harder to modify the code by locking you down to how the code is written, versus what the code is supposed to do.

Test::More is a pretty standard module for writing your tests with, and once you have started down that path Devel::Cover will be invaluable to find code paths you haven't tested yet.

But what about scripts? If you refactor your scripts to be thin wrapppers around a module that you call, you can test the module and be confident the API's in your code that your script uses all work correctly and as you expect them to.

Another large benefit to testing is it makes refactoring much easier, as you can rip out and rework large sections of code without worrying about if what the code is supposed to do is broken.

Test driven development is a good subject to be familiar with, check it out. You might like it.


In reply to Re: Testing parameters and return values by Tuppence
in thread Testing parameters and return values by Jman1

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.