Testing Package Code
The Art of Unit Tests
Would you get into an airplane that nobody had ever flown before? What if it had been flown, but only under perfect conditions - blue skies, no wind - but not in bad weather? What if it had only ever been flown with no passengers or cargo inside?
Just like with any other technology, when you build a new package, you need to test it out before you send it off to be used in real applications. The way to test out functions is by writing unit tests that make sure the function behaves how you expect - both in ideal settings, and when there is a problem!
Last week, you saw some examples of unit tests in the testthat package structure. For now, we’ll take a step back from that formal structure and simply think about how to write quick code to check your function.