CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsunit-testingrspec
zorn
zorn

Reputation: 438

Rspec: nil.should_not be_nil passes when I expect failure. Why?

Doing some rspec work in a Rails project. Kind curious why these should_not be_nil expectations pass. Any thoughts? 

it "nils should be nil" do
  @io = nil
  @io.should_not be_nil #passes (shouldn't!!)
  nil.should_not be_nil #passes (shouldn't!!)
  @io.should == nil # passes
  @io.should be_nil # passes
  @io.nil?.should be_true # passes
  #@io.nil?.should be_false # fails as expected
end

UPDATE: Based on feedback here I've been able isolate the cause of this (which is from things loaded in the spec_helper). I believe it's due to a poor swizzling of .nil? or .blank? which I'm going to have a talk to the dev to see if these overrides are really necessary at all.

Thanks to those who helped verify my stuff.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 21682

Answers (1)

ernd enson
ernd enson

Reputation: 1764

I can not reproduce your statements. I wrote them in a fake spec in an existing project like this.

require 'spec_helper'

describe "Pepper" do
  describe "simplicity" do
  before(:each) { @io = nil }
  # should fail
  it 'should be nil 1' do
    @io.should_not be_nil 
  end
  # should fail
  it 'should be nil 2' do
    nil.should_not be_nil 
  end
  # should NOT fail
  it 'should be nil 3' do
    @io.should == nil
  end
  # should NOT fail
  it 'should be nil 4' do   
    @io.should be_nil
  end
  # should NOT fail
  it 'should be nil 5' do
    @io.nil?.should be_true # passes
  end
  # should fail
  it 'should be nil 6' do
    @io.nil?.should be_false 
  end
  end
end

which returns - as expected - the following output:

simplicity
should be nil 1 (FAILED - 1)
should be nil 2 (FAILED - 2)
should be nil 3
should be nil 4
should be nil 5
should be nil 6 (FAILED - 3)

So maybe your spec_helper is implying something, that is irritating your specs.

Upvotes: 7

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