Add documentation for #2288

Martin Schulze
2021-11-06 08:12:52 +01:00
parent 867ac1f6c9
commit c402c10c8e

49
SC2314.md Normal file

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
## bats: ! \<command> will never fail the test
### Problematic code:
```sh
#!/usr/bin/env bats
@test "test" {
# ... code
! test_file_exists
# ... more code
}
```
### Correct code:
```sh
#!/usr/bin/env bats
@test "test" {
# ... code
run ! test_file_exists
# ... more code
}
```
### Rationale:
Bats uses `set -e` and `trap ERR` to catch test failures as early as possible.
Although the return code of a `!` negated command is inverted, they will never trigger `errexit`, due to a bash design decision (see [Related Resources](#related-resources)).
This means that tests which use `!` can never fail.
Starting with bats 1.5.0 you can use `!` inside `run`.
If you are still using an older bats version, you can rewrite `! <command>` to `<command> && exit 1`.
### Exceptions:
The return code of the last command in the test will be the exit code of the test function.
This means that you can use `! <command>` on the last line of the test and it will still fail appropriately.
However, you are encouraged to still use `run !` in this case for consistency.
Shellcheck won't emit this error when using `! <command>` as last command in a test to avoid confusing users whose tests work as intended.
### Related resources:
* [SC2251: This ! is not on a condition and skips errexit](SC2251.md)
* [Stackoverflow: Why do I need parenthesis In bash `set -e` and negated return code](https://stackoverflow.com/a/39582012/760746)
* [bash manpage](https://linux.die.net/man/1/bash) (look at `trap [-lp] [[arg] sigspec ...]`):
> The ERR trap is not executed [...] if the command's return value is being inverted via !