NAME

Test::Files - A Test::Builder based module to ease testing with files and dirs

SYNOPSIS

use Test::More tests => 5;
use Test::Files;
use File::Spec;

my $some_file  = File::Spec->catfile( qw/ path to some file / );
my $other_file = File::Spec->catfile( qw/ path to other file / );
my $some_dir   = File::Spec->catdir ( qw/ some dir / );
my $other_dir  = File::Spec->catdir ( qw/ other dir with same stuff / );

file_ok($some_file, "contents\nof file", "some file");

compare_ok($some_file, $other_file, "they're the same");
compare_filter_ok($file1, $file2, \&filter, "they're almost the same");

dir_contains_ok     ( $some_dir, [qw(files some_dir should contain)] );

dir_only_contains_ok( $some_dir, [qw(files some_dir should contain)] );

compare_dirs_ok($some_dir, $other_dir);
compare_dirs_filter_ok($some_dir, $other_dir, \&filter_fcn);

ABSTRACT

Test::Builder based test helper which helps you test files and their contents.
Includes facilities for comparing whole directory trees for structure and/or
content.

DESCRIPTION

This module is like Test::More, in fact you should use that first as shown above. It exports

file_ok

compare the contents of a file to a string

compare_ok

compare the contents of two files

compare_filter_ok

compare the contents of two files, but sends each line through a filter so things that shouldn't count against success can be stripped

dir_contains_ok

checks a directory for the presence of a list files

dir_contains_only_ok

checks a directory to ensure that the listed files are present and that they are the only ones present

compare_dirs_ok

compares all text files in two directories reporting any differences

compare_dirs_filter_ok

works like compare_dirs_ok, but calls a filter function on each line of input, allowing you to exclude or alter some text to avoid spurious failures (like timestamp disagreements).

Though the SYNOPSIS examples don't all have names, you can and should provide a name for each test. Names are omitted above only to reduce clutter and line widths.

You should follow the lead of the SYNOPSIS examples and use File::Spec. This makes it much more likely that your tests will pass on a different operating system.

All of the content comparison routines provide diff diagnostic output when they report failure. Currently that diff output is always in table form and can't be changed.

Most of the functions are self explanatory. One exception is compare_dirs_filter_ok which compares two directory trees, like compare_dirs_ok but with a twist. The twist is a filter which each line is fed through before comparison. I wanted this because some files are really the same, but look different textually. In particular, I was comparing files with machine generated dates. Everything in them was identical, except those dates.

The filter function receives each line of each file. It may perform any necessary transformations (like excising dates), then it must return the line in (possibly) transformed state. For example, my first filter was

sub chop_dates {
    my $line = shift;
    $line =~ s/\d{4}(.\d\d){5}//;
    return $line;
}

This removes all strings like 2003.10.14.14.17.37. Everything else is unchanged and my failing tests started passing as expected. If you want to exclude the line from consideration, return "" (do not return undef, that makes it harder to chain filters together and might lead to warnings).

compare_filter_ok works in a similar manner for a single file comparison.

The test suite has examples of the use of each function and what the output looks like on failure, though it that doesn't necessarily make them easy to read.

EXPORT

file_ok
compare_ok
compare_filter_ok
dir_contains_ok
dir_only_contains_ok
compare_dirs_ok
compare_dirs_filter_ok

DEPENDENCIES

Test::Builder
Test::More
Text::Diff
Algorithm::Diff
Test::Builder::Tester (used only during testing)

SEE ALSO

Consult Test::Simple, Test::More, and Test::Builder for more testing help. This module really just adds functions to what Test::More does.

AUTHOR

Phil Crow, <philcrow2000@yahoo.com<gt>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2003-2005 by Phil Crow

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl 5.8.1 itself.