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Testing on the Toilet: Avoid Hardcoding Values for Better Libraries

Wednesday, August 19, 2020
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Labels: Adel Saoud , TotT

7 comments :

  1. AnonymousAugust 19, 2020 at 7:09:00 PM PDT

    Ironically, you've omitted their value for testing :P. Default arguments also make it super easy to test typical usage, as well as all the weird edge cases.

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    1. AdelAugust 20, 2020 at 9:28:00 AM PDT

      Thanks for your message! I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "omitted their value for testing", so feel free to elaborate!

      Yes exactly! Default arguments make it easy for the function callers to use your function, but they also allow for the use & unit testing of a wide range of values & edge cases.

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    2. Husain AlshehhiAugust 21, 2020 at 12:24:00 PM PDT

      He meant that this refactor enables for easy testing, compared to having hardcoded value inside the class. (this is a test blog after all:)

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  2. Karlo SmidAugust 20, 2020 at 4:59:00 AM PDT

    Hi Adel, thank you for this post.

    I know that this is an example, but that size value should be checked in function body. This is usual pattern in introducing security bugs in C/C++, when we allow user of our function to set size of something.

    Regards, Karlo.

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    1. AdelAugust 20, 2020 at 9:34:00 AM PDT

      Hi Karlo, you're absolutely right! Validating user input is a very important part of any code, but we've omitted it in our examples above to keep the code slim & focused on our discussed topic.

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  3. Igor GanapolskyAugust 20, 2020 at 7:36:00 AM PDT

    When is it a good idea to use constant fields in a class, then?

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    1. AdelAugust 20, 2020 at 9:49:00 AM PDT

      Good question, Igor! We're actually not advocating against constants in classes, those have their use cases for sure.

      For example, the const & function in the example in red are quite OK if they're defined in your own class that is only used by your project where the logic is specific & never/rarely changes. That code becomes an issue though, for the reasons discussed in the post, if it's part of a public code library accessible to many other engineers & projects where it should cater for a wide variety of use cases & values.

      I hope that clarifies things!

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