$ cat joew.t
#!/opt/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use warnings;

use Test::More tests => 3;

ok(0==0, '0==0');

SKIP: {
    skip "Skipping odd tests", 1 unless 0;
    ok(1==1, '1==1');
}

ok(2==2, '2==2');

$ perl joew.t
1..3
ok 1 - 0==0
ok 2 # skip Skipping odd tests
ok 3 - 2==2

$ prove joew.t
joew....ok
        1/3 skipped: Skipping odd tests
All tests successful, 1 subtest skipped.
Files=1, Tests=3,  1 wallclock secs ( 0.12 cusr +  0.06 csys =  0.18 C
+PU)
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Test and Test::More are very close to what I want, but insufficient becuase it skips tests but not actual code.

They skip the tests by skipping the code that runs those tests - so you should be able to use them (or the same technique - using next to exit a block from within a subroutine - evil but it works).

Not sure how this would help.

Effectively what I want is for this

step a;
testBlock("Block1",checkSomething)
    step b;
}
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to work like

step a;
if(checkSomething){
    step b;
}else{
    print "Not running step b as checkSomething failed"
}
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Hope that makes things clearer

So what you want to do is invent a programming language, and make it work by parsing it then translating it to Perl. If the language is simple, that shouldn't be that hard to do.

However you want to make it not look like a programming language. And you want it to be capable. And you don't want to let your users know that they are actually programming. Oh, and you want to be able to extend the language easily.

That's a hard problem. And it is mostly a psychological one. What I'd suggest doing is a lot of whiteboarding. Write up samples of what people should write and what it would do. Go over it with users. When you have something mutually acceptable, then write a filter to turn that into Perl code. (Filter::Simple may help.)

You can then make it extensible by having some command in your new language that loads a Perl module that adds new functions. :-)

step a;
testBlock("Block1",checkSomething)
    step b;
}
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What does the unbalanced curly right bracket mean?

The closest I can whip up - with a bit of syntax change - is

sub checkSomething { 0 }

sub testBlock (**&) {
    my ($block,$cond,$sub) = @_;
    my $test = &{$cond};
    $test ? &$sub : warn "not running code for $block since '$cond' fa
+iled \n";
}

testBlock "Block1", 'checkSomething', sub {
    print "done\n"; # or another test
};
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But I do ask - what good is it to provide test suites for somebody who doesn't grok if/else, and what could that target user possibly debug?

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

I hope this was a troll, and not meant seriously. If not, then you've missed out on several decades of programming theory.

Tilly,
If you read in his text "if..else construct is deemed to complicated for my target users". This made me believe that it could have been a solution if not for the targeted users, what is simpler labels?