Question

I just started using Scala and Spec2. However, I’m a little bit confusing of the acceptance style in spec2.

Could somebody explain it to me what’s the function of ! and ^ in this case. I have read at the documentation and I still don’t quite understand. I understand the unit testing pattern, but this part is really hard to understand for me.

  "this is my specification"                          ^
    "and example 1"                                   ! e1^
    "and example 2"                                   ! e2

  def e1 = success
  def e2 = success

This example I got it from http://etorreborre.github.com/specs2/guide/org.specs2.guide.Structure.html

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

It is quite simple. As written on the page ^ builds a list of fragments. Fragments can be either strings, descriptions with code blocks attached (“description” ! block) or control elements like p for a blank line. So your example can be read as:

Description("this is my specification") and
  Description("and example 1").withBlock(e1) and
  Description("and example 2").withBlock(e2)

This will be assigned as the body of the def is = at the top of your spec class. Internally this list will then be processed and for each description there will be a line printed to the console and depending on the result of the block (if it has one) it will be colored differently.

So to sum it up, it build a list of items that will be processed by the test runner.