Re: Improved TAP tests by replacing sub-optimal uses of ok() with better Test::More functions

Hi all,

I've noticed that many TAP tests in the codebase make sub-optimal use of the "ok()" function. Specifically, ok() is often used for expressions involving comparison operators or regex matches, which is not ideal because other Test::More functions provide much clearer diagnostic messages when tests fail.

For example, instead of writing:

                   ok($var =~ /foo/, "found foo")

it’s better to write:

                   like($var, /foo/, "found foo")

I experimented by modifying a TAP test in src/bin/pg_dump to deliberately fail using ok(). The failure output was quite minimal and didn’t give much detail:

# +++ tap check in src/bin/pg_dump +++
t/005_pg_dump_filterfile.pl .. 1/?
#   Failed test 'table one dumped'
#   at t/005_pg_dump_filterfile.pl line 103.
t/005_pg_dump_filterfile.pl .. 57/? # Looks like you failed 1 test of 108.
t/005_pg_dump_filterfile.pl .. Dubious, test returned 1 (wstat 256, 0x100)
Failed 1/108 subtests

Test Summary Report
-------------------
t/005_pg_dump_filterfile.pl (Wstat: 256 (exited 1) Tests: 108 Failed: 1)
  Failed test:  2
  Non-zero exit status: 1

Then I changed the same test to use like() instead of ok(), which produced much more informative diagnostics:

# +++ tap check in src/bin/pg_dump +++
t/005_pg_dump_filterfile.pl .. 1/?
#   Failed test 'table one dumped'
#   at t/005_pg_dump_filterfile.pl line 103.
#

            #                   '--
# '
#     doesn't match '(?^m:^CREATE TABLE public1\.table_one)'
t/005_pg_dump_filterfile.pl .. 41/? # Looks like you failed 1 test of 108.
t/005_pg_dump_filterfile.pl .. Dubious, test returned 1 (wstat 256, 0x100)
Failed 1/108 subtests

Test Summary Report
-------------------
t/005_pg_dump_filterfile.pl (Wstat: 256 (exited 1) Tests: 108 Failed: 1)
  Failed test:  2
  Non-zero exit status: 1

Based on this, I’ve replaced all such uses of ok() with the more appropriate is(), isnt(), like(), unlike(), and cmp_ok() functions, depending on the test case.

Please find the attached patch implementing these improvements...    

  '

Great, I think this is a definite improvement. I saw someone recently complaining about this overuse of ok(), so thanks for doing the work to improve it.

cheers

andrew

--
Andrew Dunstan
EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com