Is the assert command supported?

[Peter W A Wood]

Thanks Mark

> On 13 Oct 2015, at 15:52, Mark Waddingham <mark at livecode.com> wrote:
> 
> On 2015-10-13 08:59, Peter W A Wood wrote:
>> The assert command appears to be included in LiveCode 8 but is not
>> mentioned in either the dictionary or the user guide. All I’ve been
>> able to find about was in an article in RevUp -
>> http://newsletters.livecode.com/february/issue166/newsletter1.html
>> <http://newsletters.livecode.com/february/issue166/newsletter1.html>
>> Is it still supported? It is still experimental?
> 
> Still experimental - the main problem it was put in to solve was to be able to test for error's being thrown from an expression. However, as it turns out, its inflexibility doesn't really warrant its use and I wonder if the 'assert' verb should actually be repurposed away from unit tests and to general (simple) runtime assertions.

I was mis-using it for general (simple) runtime assertions when I wish to call a function and don’t use the returned value. I think it would be a good addition to the language.

> If you are looking to write unit-tests, then Peter recently put together a super-simple LiveCode Script test runner which runs unit tests in the engine after they are built under CI:
> 
> https://github.com/livecode/livecode/tree/develop/tests/lcs <https://github.com/livecode/livecode/tree/develop/tests/lcs>

I have my own even simpler test framework, based on others I have used with other languages. It is very flexible and sufficient for my needs. It can be used to test both GUI stacks and Server stacks - https://github.com/PeterWAWood/LiveCode-MiniTest <https://github.com/PeterWAWood/LiveCode-MiniTest> 

Kind regards

Peter