functiontests not able to work properly in a for loop

Dear team,

I am trying to test a set of functions using functiontests each considering different datasets

For this, I have created a for loop that updates a global variable (timestamp) prior calling function tests.

Problem is that it only runs for the last element on the timestamp array.

Can you please provide guidance on how to overcome this issue?

Thanks

Diego

function tests = test_functionality

global timestamp;

addpath(genpath("../../../Source"));

timestamps_list = {'Xxx' 'Yyy'};

for i=1:size(timestamps_list,2)

timestamp = timestamps_list{i};

tests = functiontests(localfunctions);

end

end

[Jan]

Problem is that it only runs for the last element on the timestamp array.

timestamp is a scalar according to:

timestamp = timestamps_list{i};

So "the last" element of this array is "the only one" also. What else could happen?

What exactly is "it" in "it only runs"?

Answer 1

[Abhas]

Hi Diego,

In the code, the loop is overwriting the 'tests' variable in each iteration, which results in only the last set of tests being returned. To store dynamically generated suite of tests, concatenate or collect these tests in an array that grows with each iteration of your loop.

Her's the MATLAB code to accumulate tests from all iterations into a single test suite:

function tests = test_functionality
    global timestamp;
    addpath(genpath("../../../Source"));
    timestamps_list = {'Xxx', 'Yyy'};
    tests = []; % Initialize an empty array to collect tests

    for i = 1:length(timestamps_list)
        timestamp = timestamps_list{i};
        tempTests = functiontests(localfunctions);
        tests = [tests, tempTests]; % Concatenate the new tests to the existing ones
    end
end

The above code ensure that the 'test_functionality' function returns a suite of tests that includes tests generated for each timestamp of the 'timestamps_list', thereby overcoming the issue of only running tests for the last element.

You may refer to the following documentation links to have a better understanding of writing and dynamically storing tests:

1. https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab-unit-test-framework.html
2. https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/math/creating-and-concatenating-matrices.html