


Test::Harness(3p)Perl Programmers Reference GuidTest::Harness(3p)


NAME
       Test::Harness - run perl standard test scripts with
       statistics

SYNOPSIS
       use Test::Harness;

       runtests(@tests);

DESCRIPTION
       (By using the the Test manpage module, you can write test
       scripts without knowing the exact output this module
       expects.  However, if you need to know the specifics, read
       on!)

       Perl test scripts print to standard output ""ok N"" for
       each single test, where "N" is an increasing sequence of
       integers. The first line output by a standard test script
       is ""1..M"" with "M" being the number of tests that should
       be run within the test script. Test::Har-
       ness::runtests(@tests) runs all the testscripts named as
       arguments and checks standard output for the expected ""ok
       N"" strings.

       After all tests have been performed, runtests() prints
       some performance statistics that are computed by the
       Benchmark module.

       The test script output

       Any output from the testscript to standard error is
       ignored and bypassed, thus will be seen by the user. Lines
       written to standard output containing "/^(not\s+)?ok\b/"
       are interpreted as feedback for runtests().  All other
       lines are discarded.

       It is tolerated if the test numbers after "ok" are omit-
       ted. In this case Test::Harness maintains temporarily its
       own counter until the script supplies test numbers again.
       So the following test script

           print <<END;
           1..6
           not ok
           ok
           not ok
           ok
           ok
           END

       will generate

           FAILED tests 1, 3, 6
           Failed 3/6 tests, 50.00% okay



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Test::Harness(3p)Perl Programmers Reference GuidTest::Harness(3p)


       The global variable $Test::Harness::verbose is exportable
       and can be used to let runtests() display the standard
       output of the script without altering the behavior other-
       wise.

       The global variable $Test::Harness::switches is exportable
       and can be used to set perl command line options used for
       running the test script(s). The default value is "-w".

       If the standard output line contains substring " # Skip"
       (with variations in spacing and case) after "ok" or "ok
       NUMBER", it is counted as a skipped test.  If the whole
       testscript succeeds, the count of skipped tests is
       included in the generated output.

       "Test::Harness" reports the text after " # Skip(whatever)"
       as a reason for skipping.  Similarly, one can include a
       similar explanation in a "1..0" line emitted if the test
       is skipped completely:

         1..0 # Skipped: no leverage found


EXPORT
       "&runtests" is exported by Test::Harness per default.

DIAGNOSTICS
       ""All tests successful.\nFiles=%d,  Tests=%d, %s""
           If all tests are successful some statistics about the
           performance are printed.

       ""FAILED tests %s\n\tFailed %d/%d tests, %.2f%% okay.""
           For any single script that has failing subtests
           statistics like the above are printed.

       ""Test returned status %d (wstat %d)""
           Scripts that return a non-zero exit status, both "$?
           >> 8" and "$?" are printed in a message similar to the
           above.

       ""Failed 1 test, %.2f%% okay. %s""
       ""Failed %d/%d tests, %.2f%% okay. %s""
           If not all tests were successful, the script dies with
           one of the above messages.

ENVIRONMENT
       Setting "HARNESS_IGNORE_EXITCODE" makes harness ignore the
       exit status of child processes.

       Setting "HARNESS_NOTTY" to a true value forces it to
       behave as though STDOUT were not a console.  You may need
       to set this if you don't want harness to output more fre-
       quent progress messages using carriage returns.  Some con-
       soles may not handle carriage returns properly (which



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Test::Harness(3p)Perl Programmers Reference GuidTest::Harness(3p)


       results in a somewhat messy output).

       Setting "HARNESS_COMPILE_TEST" to a true value will make
       harness attempt to compile the test using "perlcc" before
       running it.

       If "HARNESS_FILELEAK_IN_DIR" is set to the name of a
       directory, harness will check after each test whether new
       files appeared in that directory, and report them as

         LEAKED FILES: scr.tmp 0 my.db

       If relative, directory name is with respect to the current
       directory at the moment runtests() was called.  Putting
       absolute path into "HARNESS_FILELEAK_IN_DIR" may give more
       predicatable results.

       The value of "HARNESS_PERL_SWITCHES" will be prepended to
       the switches used to invoke perl on each test.  For exam-
       ple, setting "HARNESS_PERL_SWITCHES" to "-W" will run all
       tests with all warnings enabled.

       If "HARNESS_COLUMNS" is set, then this value will be used
       for the width of the terminal. If it is not set then it
       will default to "COLUMNS". If this is not set, it will
       default to 80. Note that users of Bourne-sh based shells
       will need to "export COLUMNS" for this module to use that
       variable.

       Harness sets "HARNESS_ACTIVE" before executing the indi-
       vidual tests.  This allows the tests to determine if they
       are being executed through the harness or by any other
       means.

SEE ALSO
       the Test manpage for writing test scripts and also the
       Benchmark manpage for the underlying timing routines.

AUTHORS
       Either Tim Bunce or Andreas Koenig, we don't know. What we
       know for sure is, that it was inspired by Larry Wall's
       TEST script that came with perl distributions for ages.
       Numerous anonymous contributors exist. Current maintainer
       is Andreas Koenig.

BUGS
       Test::Harness uses $^X to determine the perl binary to run
       the tests with. Test scripts running via the shebang
       ("#!") line may not be portable because $^X is not consis-
       tent for shebang scripts across platforms. This is no
       problem when Test::Harness is run with an absolute path to
       the perl binary or when $^X can be found in the path.





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