MATLAB xUnit Test Framework: How to Test an Error Message
It's surprising to most people (but not quality engineers) how often programmers make errors in error-handling code. Because of this unfortunate truth, it is useful to write unit tests that verify that your MATLAB code throws the proper error, at the proper time.
The assertion function that makes this task easy is assertExceptionThrown. This example shows how to write a unit test that verifies the "Too many input arguments" error for the cos function.
Your first step is to determine the error identifier associated with the error message. You can find out the error identifier by using the lasterror function.
If you call cos with two input arguments, like this:
cos(1, 2)
you get this error message:
Error using ==> cos Too many input arguments.
Then if you call lasterror, you get this output:
ans =
message: [1x45 char]
identifier: 'MATLAB:maxrhs'
stack: [0x1 struct]So the identifier associated with this error message is 'MATLAB:maxrhs'.
When you write your test function, you'll form an anonymous function handle that calls cos with the erroneous additional input argument.
f = @() cos(1, 2)
f =
@()cos(1,2)
You then pass this function to assertExceptionThrown, along with the expected error identifier.
assertExceptionThrown(f, 'MATLAB:maxrhs');
assertExceptionThrown verifies that when f() is called, an error results with the specified error identifier.
Here's our error condition test for the cos function.
cd examples_general type testCos
function testSuite = testCos testSuite = buildFunctionHandleTestSuite(localfunctions); function testTooManyInputs assertExceptionThrown(@() cos(1, 2), 'MATLAB:maxrhs');
Run the test using runxunit.
runxunit testCos
Test suite: testCos Test suite location: C:\Users\psexton\Documents\GitHub\matlab-xunit-doctest\doc\examples_general\testCos.m 20-Feb-2014 19:59:07 Starting test run with 1 test case. . PASSED in 0.010 seconds.