[Numpy-discussion] ANN: NumPy 1.2.0

[Robert Kern]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 13:43, Francesc Alted <faltet at pytables.org> wrote:

> Plain assert clauses used to be the most common way to check for test
> units in the original "unittest" module.  Later on, the authors started
> to introduce things like self.assert_() and family and warned that the
> use of the "assert" clause should be avoided (maybe thinking about
> possible changes in semantics inside Python itself, maybe thinking
> about the use of -OO).

Mostly it was reporting, I think. With assertEquals(x,y), you get a
nice message showing the values of x and y. This is obviated by nose,
which can introspect to get the values. From the unittest
documentation:

  """These methods are used instead of the assert statement so the
test runner can accumulate all test results and produce a report."""

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
though it had an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco