Once again, I am creating a zoo of OO Perl modules from scratch, and given the opportunity I am using test Driven Development (TDD), which I have to say is a great way to code.

Having built three OO modules so far, I am running into a problem. I want to test creating objects with as many different combinations as possible, and my general test plan is

Ideally this leaves things exactly the way they started, which means I can run the tests over and over, without stopping to clean up afterwards.

I'd like to try lots of different choices when I create the objects, and later test that all of the choics I made were correctly stored in the instantied object. The two methods I can think of for doing that are 1. nested loops, and 2. a single loop that increments a number, along with a series of tests inside the loop that checks for a particular bit and, if set, enables that particular option.

Aside: Hmm, maybe the way I should be doing it is create a named object in one scope, and then immediately test the named object in another scope, all inside one loop ..

Neither of these seem very elegant .. I did find Math::Combinatorics on CPAN but that's not really want I'm looking for. Has anyone else come across this particular challenge?

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

In reply to Testing and combinations by talexb

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