hello! i was wondering how i would go about giving a `kotlin.test.assertEquals` a list of valid expe...

# getting-started

[Grian]

hello! i was wondering how i would go about giving a kotlin.test.assertEquals a list of valid expected outputs, like can i just pass it a list and if the output of whatever im testing is part of that list itll say the test passed?

[Vampire]

No, a list is not equal to one of its members, that wouldn't really make much sense

[Vampire]

You probably want assertTrue or expect

[yogi]

I believe the problem is to accept the output if it is a valid subset of the list of expected outputs.
eg: expectedOutput = [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
resultOutput = [ 3, 4 ]
In such a case, one would want the test to pass.

If that is the problem statement, one quick way to do it would be to

assertEquals (expectedOutput.intersect(resultOutput), resultOutput, "Expected $resultOutput to be a subset of $expectedOutput" )

[Vampire]

Even if that would be the case (which I doubt) I think assertTrue would be better.
There is no need to do a full intersect when you just want to know whether one list contains the other. So it should be assertTrue(expectedOutput.containsAll(resultOutput), "my message") which can abort as soon as it found a discrepancy.

Or in the case how I understood it assertTrue(expectedOutput.contains(resultOutput), "my message")

[Grian]

Thanks for the help guys! What i intended to ask originally was how to check if the output(a single int) was part of a list of valid answers, assertTrue works for what i need.

[Vampire]

Yes, that's what I thought any my last line shows 🙂

[Cedrick Cooke]

If this is a case that comes up often in your testing, assertContains and assertContainsAll with automatic error messages are likely worthwhile functions to create.