Re: RFA: Don't include value of expression in pc-fp.exp test name

[David Carlton <carlton@kealia.com>]

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 14:29:42 -0400, Andrew Cagney <ac131313@redhat.com> said:

> To split hairs, I can see two cases:

> - two runs within identical environments
> I can see 'diff -u' reasonably working here.

> - two runs within different environments
> After paren stripping the results should be identical (or close two it).

> For instance sizeof.exp contains various tests to check that sizes
> are sane.  The actual sizes found are included in the output.
> That's fine since if the numbers were to change between runs the
> test results are pretty sunk.

That's a very good point.  I've seen variants of this myself: I've
seen interesting differences between test runs if I change GCC
versions/debug formats, as well.  For example, this can show up in
tests with multiple PASS branches: sometimes, it can be interesting to
know which PASS branch you hit (or, rather, if you had a change from
one PASS branch to another PASS branch), so putting information in
parentheses there is useful.

I would be quite happy if we adopted the philosophy that the only
stuff that you should put in parentheses satisfies these conditions:

* It shouldn't change if the environment changes (for some appropriate
  value of "the environment changes").

* If it does change while the enviroment stays the same, then you want
  to know about it.

David Carlton
carlton@kealia.com