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3 points by akkartik 3168 days ago | link | parent

Hey, one last-minute suggestion: suite-w/setup is a pretty long and ugly name. How about if we just always include a set of setup bindings in suite, even if they're empty? It would look nice and consistent with def and mac:

  ; without setup
  (suite foo ()
    (test must-bar
      (assert-same 2 (+ 1 1)))

  ; with setup
  (suite foo (a 1
              b 2)
    (test must-bar
      (assert-same b (+ a a)))
I wouldn't be too disappointed if you decide against this, partly since it would save me the trouble of fixing my translator all over again :)


2 points by zck 3168 days ago | link

Interesting. I like the consistency. I don't love how it makes the most common case (I think the no-setup case is most common) and adds more code to it.

Maybe I can come up with a simpler, less awful thing.

Perhaps:

    (suite foo (setup a 1
                      b 2)
           (test must-bar
                 (assert-same b (+ a a))))
It does seem relatively simple. Hrm.

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2 points by akkartik 3168 days ago | link

I'm kinda growing to like my idea the more I think about it. You're right that it adds 3 characters to the common case, but lisp has a long tradition of empty parens in various places. Saving characters shouldn't be a high priority, IMO. Paul Graham's notion of conciseness counts tokens, not characters.

But yeah, happy to see what other ideas we can come up with. I think the setup keyword above is worse; lisps don't tend to have keywords that aren't functions or macros. Then again, test is already a keyword that's not a function.. Hmm, I like it better if you indent it like this:

  (suite foo
         (setup a 1
                b 2)
         (test must-bar
               (assert-same b (+ a a))))
The benefit of this approach is that it makes the syntax seem extensible. It's obvious how new features should be added.

Ok, I could live with this :)

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