[Haskell-cafe] Using quickcheck to check for errors

[Niklas Hambüchen]

On 07/06/14 19:56, Rafael Almeida wrote:
> Let's say we want to quickcheck the function !!. Passing a negative
> index to it is an error. However, how can you make a check that it
> indeed errors in such situation?

Hello!

You can do so with the divine unsafePerformIO-try-evaluate-force combo.

-- Code also at https://gist.github.com/nh2/1ce734759b196c3483fa
{-# LANGUAGE ScopedTypeVariables #-}

import Control.Exception
import Control.DeepSeq
import Data.List (isPrefixOf)
import System.IO.Unsafe (unsafePerformIO)
import Test.QuickCheck

main :: IO ()
main = quickCheck $ property $ \(list :: [Char], n :: Int) ->
  n >= length list ==> throwsIndexError (list !! n)


throwsIndexError :: (NFData a) => a -> Bool
throwsIndexError expr = unsafePerformIO $ do
  res <- try $ evaluate (force expr)
  case res of
    Left (ErrorCall msg) -> return $ "Prelude.(!!): index too large"
`isPrefixOf` msg
    Right _              -> return False -- no exception


-- End of code

`force` makes sure that the expression is evaluated all the way to the
bottom, and nothing is left lazily unevaluated. If you don't desire
that, you can leave `force` out.

We use `isPrefixOf` because for some reason, the exception contains a
newline.

In case you are not familiar with deepseq, the `NFData a` requirement
makes sure that the expression can be evaluated all the way down. If you
don't want/need to use `force`, you can drop that one.

The use of `unsafePerformIO` is OK here because it is referentially
transparent: We use it only to wrap a pure function, and perform no
further IO in it.

Hope that helps!
Niklas