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Test Programs

The programmer must provide one or more programs that thorougly test the newly submitted code. These programs should be very simple to run, and should exercise all aspects of the new code.⁶

To indicate a successful test, it will often suffice for the test program to simply print``OK'' to standard output, and return 0 as the value of the main program. In the test program fails, it should print a descriptive error message, and return some non-zero value to the environment. Some classes and global functions (especially those which employ numerical methods) can only be adequately tested by comparing a list of expected results against actual results, making allowance for tolerable roundoff differences⁷.

The programmer may use two strategies here:

1.

Create tMyClass.out, which contains the expected results, and tMyClass.exec, a shell script which runs tMyClass, redirects the actual results to a file, and compares them to the contents of tMyClass.out.

2.

Alternatively, the tMyClass program itself creates the new results file, and runs the comparison, using a system call; when the comparison of results is complete, tMyClass prints ``OK'' and returns 0 to the environment if it is successful, just as the simpler test programs do.