atf-check1

Usage

Overview

atf-check executes a given command and analyzes its results, including exit code, stdout, and stderr.

Test cases must use atf-sh(3)'s atf_check builtin function instead of calling this utility directly.

atf-check will execute the provided command and apply checks specified by arguments. By default atf-check acts as if it was run with -s exit:0 -o empty -e empty.

-o empty and -e empty may be specified multiple times. If they are specified multiple times, the checks will be applied to the appropriate stream in the order they were provided.

The following options are available:

-s qual:value

Analyzes termination status. Must be one of:

exit:<value>

checks that the program exited cleanly and that its exit status is equal to value. The exit code can be omitted altogether, in which case any clean exit is accepted.

ignore

ignores the exit check.

signal:<value>

checks that the program exited due to a signal, and (optionally) checks that the signal which terminated the process is value. The signal can be specified as a number, a name, or it can be omitted altogether (in which case any signal is accepted).

Most of these checkers can be prefixed by the ‘not-’ string, which effectively reverses the check.

-o action:arg

Analyzes standard output. Must be one of:

empty

checks that stdout is empty

ignore

ignores stdout

file:<path>

compares stdout with given file

inline:<value>

compares stdout with inline value

match:<regexp>

looks for a regular expression in stdout

save:<path>

saves stdout to given file

Most of these checkers can be prefixed by the ‘not-’ string, which effectively reverses the check.

-e action:arg

Analyzes standard error. The usage is identical to -o.

-x

Executes command as a shell command line, executing it with the system shell defined by ATF_SHELL. You should avoid using this flag if at all possible to prevent shell quoting issues.

-r timeout[:interval]

Repeats failed checks until the timeout (in seconds) expires. If unspecified, the default interval (in milliseconds) is 50 ms. This can be used to wait for an expected update to the contents of a file.

Environment

ATF_SHELL

Path to the system shell to be used when the -x is given to run commands.

Exit status

atf-check exits 0 on success, and other (unspecified) value on failure.

Examples

The following are sample invocations from within a test case. Note that we use the atf_check function provided by atf-sh(3) instead of executing atf-check directly:

# Exit code 0, nothing on stdout/stderr
atf_check true
# Typical usage if failure is expected
atf_check -s not-exit:0 false
# Checking stdout/stderr
echo foobar >expout
atf_check -o file:expout -e inline:"xx\tyy\n" \
    -x 'echo foobar ; printf "xx\tyy\n" >&2'
# Checking for a crash
atf_check -s signal:sigsegv my_program
# Combined checks
atf_check -o match:foo -o not-match:bar echo foo baz
# Wait 5 seconds for a line to show up in a file
( sleep 2 ; echo "testing 123" > $test_path ) &
atf-check -o ignore -e ignore -s exit:0 -r 5 \
    grep "testing 123" $test_path