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POTesting for Random Value - Thoughts on this Approach?
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copied!<p>OK, I have been working on a random image selector and queue system (so you don't see the same images too often).</p> <p>All was going swimmingly (as far as my crappy code does) <strong>until</strong> I got to the random bit. I wanted to test it, but how do you test for it? There is no <code>Debug.Assert(i.IsRandom)</code> (sadly) :D</p> <p>So, I got my brain on it after watering it with some tea and came up with the following, I was just wondering if I could have your thoughts?</p> <ul> <li>Basically I knew the <strong>random</strong> bit was the problem, so I ripped that out to a delegate (which would then be passed to the objects constructor).</li> <li>I then created a class that pretty much performs the same logic as the <em>live</em> code, but remembers the value selected in a private variable.</li> <li>I then threw that delegate to the live class and tested against that:</li> </ul> <p>i.e.</p> <pre><code>Debug.Assert(myObj.RndVal == RndIntTester.ValuePassed); </code></pre> <p>But I couldn't help but think, <strong>was I wasting my time?</strong> I ran that through lots of iterations to see if it fell over at any time etc.</p> <p>Do you think I was wasting my time with this? Or could I have got away with:</p> <p><img src="https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/random_number.png" alt="Awesome Random Number Generator"></p> <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/122741/testing-for-random-value-thoughts-on-this-approach#122765">GateKiller's answer</a> reminded me of this:</p> <p><img src="https://www.random.org/analysis/dilbert.jpg" alt="Dilbert Random"></p> <h2>Update to Clarify</h2> <ul> <li><strong>I should add that I basically never want to see the same result more than X number of times from a pool of Y size.</strong></li> <li>The addition of the test container basically allowed me to see if any of the previously selected images were "randomly" selected.</li> <li>I guess technically the thing here being tested in not the RNG (since I never wrote that code) but the fact that am I expecting <em>random</em> results from a limited pool, and I want to track them.</li> </ul>

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