Re: cluts weekly reports

[Rich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx>]

On Wed, Aug 03, 2011 at 07:08:34PM +0200, Luka Marčetić wrote:
> >  I'm still confused why
> >this can't be done in plain C, with the test parameters in C
> >structures that you loop over, much like some of the existing tests
> >(e.g. numeric).
> 
> It's just a lot of work. The biggest problem C has when applied in
> writing unit tests is its inability to use function pointers with
> arbitrary number of arguments, and the fact that there's no
> (dynamic?) type casting - eg there's no way to pass varying type
> arguments to say printf with a correct fmt; once a float, once an
> int. Those two make for a load of syntax that like anything but
> sugar. That's what I'm trying to generate, instead of having to type
> it all.

Could you please give some concrete examples of what trouble you're
running into? I think you're looking for a very complex solution to a
very simple problem, but I can't know until you give me a better idea
of the specific problem. There are easy ways to handle this type of
thing, with solutions ranging from a macro that concatenates the right
type of format specifier into the message string to rolling your own
rudimentary message formatting function that takes a void pointer or
union type for the data to print.

As for function pointers and the need for different numbers and types
of arguments, you can either pass a pointer to a structure that
contains all of the argument data (thereby always having the same
function signature taking a single void * argument) or have a separate
type field and cast the function pointer to the right function type
and make the call with the right parameters based on the stored type.

Rich