I humbly ask the Monks for enlightenment on the subject of testing:

I came across this question when writing a test script for a function that returns an (at the time of the test) unknown (possibly random) number of values (e.g. a list where the list length is random, like in the sample below). I can currently see no way to test this function with Test::More except using the no_plan pragma. The documentation says that using no_plan is generally A Bad Idea(tm).

In this case, you can declare that you have no plan. (Try to avoid using this as it weakens your test.)

A small sample:

# Dyn.pm
package Dyn;
use strict;
use warnings;

# Return a list with a random number of elements
sub get_list {
    my @arr = ();
    push @arr, $_ for (0 .. int(rand(10)));
    return @arr;
}

1;
__END__
[download]

# Dyn.t

use Test::More qw ( no_plan );
use Dyn;

my @arr = Dyn::get_list();
if (@arr) {
    foreach my $elem (@arr) {
        like($elem, qr/^\d+$/, q{Expect an integer});
    }
}

__END__
[download]

Now running the test illustrates the problem of having a random number of tests:

Dyn....ok
All tests successful.
Files=1, Tests=5,  0 wallclock secs ( .. )
$ prove Dyn.t
Dyn....ok
All tests successful.
Files=1, Tests=10,  0 wallclock secs ( .. )
$ prove Dyn.t
Dyn....ok
All tests successful.
Files=1, Tests=7,  0 wallclock secs ( .. )
[download]

How would the enlightened Monks approach this problem? Should I accept having no_plan?

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