Re: [tap] Parse error vs failure

Ovid <publiustemp-tapx@yahoo.com> writes:
> ----- Original Message ----
>
>> From: Michael G Schwern <schwern@pobox.com>
>
>> In Oslo, when we came across an edge case that was considered
>> nonsense, the tendency was to say that its a parse error.  For
>> example, "not ok 4 # SKIP", because why would you fail a test that
>> didn't run?  Also "1..0" without a skip, because why would you not
>> run any tests and yet not skip the test?
>
> Your arguments made sense, but I have a question: what does 'not ok
> 4 # SKIP' even mean?  To my mind, that's a parse error because
> something has gone horribly wrong or the person writing the TAP
> producer is terribly confused.  There's no way the parser can
> understand what the intent is, so making it a parse error makes
> sense to me because if *I* can't parse it, how can a TAP consumer?

Example story:

I, for instance, mark failing results *dynamically* as "# TODO" under
cirumstances when I generically convert results from foreign test
suites into TAP. This way I keep them "ok enough" but can still
recognize the failure.

I once had the idea to use "# SKIP" to model slightly different
situations from those foreign suites.

I quickly reverted due to some amount of stupidity in it. But it's
anyway a nice niche for expressing test results.

I therefore wouldn't strongly forbid them, particularly not early in
the grammar.

Kind regards,
Steffen 
-- 
Steffen Schwigon <ss5@renormalist.net>
Dresden Perl Mongers <http://dresden-pm.org/>
German Perl-Workshop 2009 <http://www.perl-workshop.de/en/2009>
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