[Haskell] ANN: SmallCheck 0.1

Colin Runciman colin at cs.york.ac.uk
Wed Sep 13 11:04:38 EDT 2006


SmallCheck: another lightweight testing library in Haskell.

Folk-law: if there is any case in which a program fails, there is almost
always a simple one.

SmallCheck is similar to QuickCheck (Claessen and Hughes 2000-)
but instead of a sample of randomly generated values, SmallCheck
tests properties for all the finitely many values up to some depth,
progressively increasing the depth used.  For data values, depth means
depth of construction.  For functional values, it is a measure combining
the depth to which arguments may be evaluated and the depth of possible
results.

Other possible sales pitches:
* write test generators for your own types more easily
* be sure any counter-examples found are minimal
* write properties using existentials as well as universals
* establish complete coverage of a defined test-space
* display counter-examples of functional type

A new version of SmallCheck can be obtained from:
http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/smallcheck0.1.tar
The differences from 0.0 are two fixes (space-fault, output buffering),
an 'unsafe' but sometimes useful Testable (IO a) instance and additional
examples.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Colin R



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