A series of next if ...s sounds like hard work for maintenance if there are more than a few of them. Sketch out your code and post it here if it looks like becoming unwieldy.

The main thing to consider is that you should be able to handle option lists of arbitrary length without needing to alter the test code. Also you should be able to specify the domain of valid option combinations in the table and have the test code generate the permutations without having to author each case in the test code.

    my $testNum = 1;
    for my $thisFile ( undef, 'triple.zip' ) {

      for my $thisListLength ( qw/0 1 3/ ) {

        my $testName = "Test-$testNum";
        $testNum++;

        diag "Test $testName with "
              . (defined($thisFile) ? $thisFile : 'no file')
              . " and list length $thisListLength";
        my $args = { name => $testName };
        $args->{'filename'} = $thisFile
          if (defined($thisFile) );

        my $doc = XYZ::SuperDocument->create($args);
        ok(defined($doc), "$testName object created");

        #  TODO: Add list stuff as well.

        _testObject($doc,$args);
      }
    }
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Here's what I have so far .. the lists are hard-coded for now, but I will move them to a common location. This is the create loop, and later in another scope I have load, test and delete operations inside an identical loop.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

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