>From the docs: BAIL_OUT BAIL_OUT($reason);
Indicates to the harness that things are going so badly all testing should terminate. This includes the running any additional test scripts. This is typically used when testing cannot continue such as a crit- ical module failing to compile or a necessary external utility not being available such as a database connection failing. The test will exit with 255. This seems extremely useful, but I confess I've never used it. When I tried to run 'prove' against my 't/sample-tests/' in TAPx::Parser, I got this: TAPx-Parser $ prove t/sample-tests/* t/sample-tests/bailout.............ok 1/5FAILED--Further testing stopped: GERONIMMMOOOOOO!!! However, if you use the '-s' switch to shuffle your tests and bailout is not first, then some tests will run until the BAIL_OUT is hit. This seems to violate the principle that tests should be able to run in any order without dependencies. I guess the reason I have never used BAIL_OUT is because if I have a bunch of tests failing, they fail quickly and I don't have to wait for them :) I suppose it's not that big of a deal, but I noticed it this evening and thought I would toss it out there in case anyone has any comments. Cheers, Ovid -- Buy the book -- http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlhks/ Perl and CGI -- http://users.easystreet.com/ovid/cgi_course/