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Asked: 2026-05-11T01:57:24+00:00

I normally try to avoid duplication and adhere to the DRY principle. However, I’m

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I normally try to avoid duplication and adhere to the DRY principle. However, I’m wondering about a case like this:

public class Feature {     final static String FEATURE_LABEL = 'blah';      public void doSomething() { ... }     ... }  public class FeatureTest {     ...     @Test     public void doSomethingShouldMakeSomethingHappen() {          assertEquals(Feature.FEATURE_LABEL,               feature.getSomethingHappens().getLabel());     }

If the requirement is that the the label be ‘blah’ and someone changes FEATURE_LABEL to ‘bleh’, the test will pass even though it no longer meets the requirement. Is this a valid place to violate DRY?

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  1. Yes, use a literal here.

    Quoting myself from a question on literals:

    Hardcoded literals should appear in unit tests for the test values, unless there is so much reuse of a value within a single test class that a local constant is useful.

    The unit tests are a description of expected values without any abstraction or redirection. Imagine yourself reading the test – you want the information literally in front of you.

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