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1[/
2 / Copyright (c) 2015 Boost.Test contributors
3 /
4 / Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying
5 / file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
6 /]
7
8[section:boost_test_universal_macro BOOST_TEST: universal and general purpose assertions]
9
10The __UTF__ provides an almost unique interface to a great range of test-case scenarios, through the __BOOST_TEST__
11macro. The general form of `BOOST_TEST` is the following:
12
13  BOOST_TEST(statement);
14  BOOST_TEST_<level>(statement, optional_modifiers)
15
16An example of use might be the following:
17
18[bt_example boost_test_macro_overview..BOOST_TEST overview..run-fail]
19
20The major features of this tool are:
21
22* a great flexibility for `statement` which may be almost anything: full expression composed by several operations are supported
23  and handled,
24* an extended reporting capability in case of failure: not only `BOOST_TEST` reports the location of the failure and a copy of `statement` itself,
25  but also the values of the operands that permits a rapid identification of the issues related to the failed assertion,
26* the possibility to control better the behavior or the reports of the checks, in particular:
27
28  * floating point comparison: the tolerance may be provided, either using the `BOOST_TEST`
29     directly with `optional_modifiers`, or with /decorators/ (see [link boost_test.testing_tools.extended_comparison.floating_point here]
30     for more details),
31  * container/collection comparisons: different operations for comparison are provided out of the box for comparing collection of
32    elements (default, per-element, lexicographic), with extended diagnostic on failures (covered in
33    [link boost_test.testing_tools.extended_comparison.collections this] section),
34  * string comparison: C-strings operands are automatically detected and the comparisons are performed as if `std::string` objects
35    were used,
36  * optional failure message,
37  * bitwise comparison, providing extended diagnostic in case of failure
38
39[warning To get all the functionalities of `BOOST_TEST` family of assertions, a C++11 capable compiler is required, especially
40 supporting the `auto` and `decltype` keywords and the variadic macros. The documentation focuses on these set of compilers.
41 For compilers not supporting all the features of `BOOST_TEST`, the macro `BOOST_TEST_MACRO_LIMITED_SUPPORT`.]
42
43[#boost_test_statement_overloads][h3 Complex statements]
44`BOOST_TEST` provides an enhanced reporting capability: additional details of the failing operands and operations are provided in the log,
45as shown on the example below:
46
47[bt_example boost_test_macro3..BOOST_TEST enhanced reporting..run-fail]
48
49`BOOST_TEST` parses the `statement` and constructs an expression out of it. `statement` may be a complex expressions
50containing almost any of the overloadable operators in C++:
51
52[table
53  [[Class of operation][operators]]
54  [[binary comparisons][`==`, `!=`, `<`, `>`, `<=`, `>=`]]
55  [[arithmetic compositions][`+`, `-`, `*`, `/`, `%`]]
56  [[bitwise compositions][`|`, `&`, `^`, `<<`, `>>`]]
57  [[assignments][`=`, `+=`, `-=`, `*=`, `/=`, `%=`, `<<=`, `>>=`, `&=`, `^=`, `|=`]]
58]
59
60`statement` is evaluated and cast to `bool`, as if it would appear as argument to an `if` statement: this is the result of the assertion
61
62[h3 Uniform reporting]
63This tool is provided in three variants corresponding to the corresponding
64[link boost_test.testing_tools.tools_assertion_severity_level severity levels]. These three levels of assertions are
65reported into the test log and output, as described in details in the section. The granularity of the
66report depends on the current [link boost_test.utf_reference.rt_param_reference.log_level log level] and
67[link boost_test.utf_reference.rt_param_reference.report_level report level].
68
69[#boost_test_statement_limitations][h3 Limitations & workaround]
70There are a few constructions that are however unsupported, but adding an extra bracket usually solves that:
71
72* statements containing ternary conditions: those statement should be surrounded by parenthesis as they cannot be overloaded
73* statements containing commas: those statements will be intercepted by the preprocessor
74* compound statements containing any logical composition `||`, `&&`. Those are disabled intentionally and should be surrounded
75  by parenthesis
76
77    BOOST_TEST((true || false));
78
79  The full details are given in [link boost_test.testing_tools.internal_details this section].
80
81[bt_example boost_test_macro_workaround..BOOST_TEST limitation and workaround..run]
82
83
84[endsect] [/ boost_test_universal_macro]
85