From: Nicholas Van Weerdenburg <nick@...>
Date: 2004-07-14T12:04:42+09:00
Subject: instance variable question in test/unit TestCase

Hi all,

test/unit is super cool.I was blown away by how test/unit automatically 
looks in ObjectSpace and creates a test suite for all tests found, and 
then runs them.  I was wondering how it was possible, so I looked at 
unit.rb-

at_exit{exit(Test::Unit::AutoRunner.run($0)) unless($! || Test::Unit.run?)}

Cool!

A couple of questions:

1. A more general question: how do I initialize instance variables 
without an "initialize" method? In my test case, I want instance 
variables, but placing "@myvar=1" outside a method doesn't seem to work 
( I dimly recall that this is a class instance variable or something 
like that). The reason I want to do this is that in subclassing 
Test::Unit::TestCase I don't know offhand what it's initialize method 
looks like (a no arg "initialize" gives an argment number error) and 
don't want to learn just for this reason.

I just thought of trying the following-

def initialize *args
    super *args
    @myvar=1
end

and it worked (I think). Cool.

My other option is the setup method, since that is called for before all 
test methods. Are there any other options?

2. where do I find the will to return to programming in Java now that 
I'm having so much fun in Ruby?

Thanks,
Nick