Best practices in unit-test writing

Question

I have a "best practices" question. I'm writing a test for a certain method, but there are multiple entry values. Should I write one test for each entry value or should I change the entryValues variable value, and call the .assert() method (doing it for all range of possible values)?

Thank you for your help. Best regards,

Pedro Magueija

edited: I'm using .NET. Visual Studio 2010 with VB.

Answer 1

If one is having to write many tests which vary only in initial input and final output one should use a data driven test. This allows you to define the test once along with a mapping between input and output. The unit testing framework will then interpret it as being one test per case. How to actually do this depends on which framework you are using.

Answer 2

It's better to have separate unit tests for each input/output sets covering the full spectrum of possible values for the method you are trying to test (or at least for those input/output sets that you want to unit test).