From: Joost Diepenmaat <joost@...>
Date: 2005-05-05T04:36:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Typo-checking instead of static typing

On Thu, May 05, 2005 at 03:49:30AM +0900, Ben Giddings wrote:
[ snip ]

> def do_something(foo)
>   if foo > 500
>     puts "Whoa, #{fo} is too many times!  I can't do that!"
>   else
>     foo.times { |i| puts i }
>   end
> end
> 
> do_something(ARGV[0])

[ snip ]

> Then there's the typo in the "puts" line.  Until the person happens to try 
> an arg greater than 500, they will have no indication the code has a flaw.
> 
> Now, would a unit test catch this?  If the programmer was careful, maybe.  
> But maybe not.
> 
> So, what advice would you guys give to a C programmer who wants a Ruby tool 
> to look over lines of code he may rarely execute?

Use a code coverage tool to run over your unit tests, and fix your
tests to go to 100% coverage. That's what I usually try to do in Perl anyway.

Pointers to coverage tools for ruby anyone?

Joost.