C++ Testing

[DragonKnight]

Hey guys only a quick one. Does anyone have any ideas on how to go about testing a single class in the program I have written??

their are two classes altogether but i want to be able to test them indervidually

Thanks for your time

[smilodon]

You right a program to test each one. You call each of the member methods and use a lot of cout or ofstream.

[DragonKnight]

you call each of the member methods? does that mean you call each indervidual function within the class??

sorry if im sounding silly just trying to fully understand it before i commence

[Tevsky]

Well how complex of classes are we talking about? If it is just a simple class holding data and has some simple accessor methods, you can just do some cout's. If it is a complex class that has dynamic memory allocation or big algorithms going on, you could look in to boost::unit_test (if you have boost installed). The boost::unit_test library will do cool stuff like automatic memory leak detection(if your IDE supports it, such as visual studio).

The key is to test a variety of conditions. Ideally, you should test the two extremes (maximum scenario and minimum scenario), a common case, and some cases that are uncommon or could cause a crash. For example, if you were testing the resize() function of a custom container you made, try calling with it 0 (the min), something like 1073741823 (probably the max), a common case like 52, and a not so common case like -12 or 39.4.

[Return 0]

Yes, just start by creating an object of the class and just cout it's functions: cout << objectname.function();, etc...

[DragonKnight]

Excellent, I shall get cracking thanks alot for your help guys