Axioms, known from program specification, allow program functionality to be described as rules or equations. The draft C++0x standard introduces axioms as part of the new concept feature. We will demonstrate a tool that uses these features for automated unit testing.

Unit testing is an important part of modern software development, where individual code units are tested in isolation. Such tests are typically case-based, checking a likely error scenario or an error that has previously been identified and fixed. Coming up with good test cases is challenging, particularly when testing generic code, and focusing on individual tests can distract from creating tests that cover the full functionality.Concepts provide a generic way of describing code interfaces for generic code. Together with axioms, program behaviour can be specified algebraically in a formal or semi-formal way.In this paper we show how concepts and axioms can be expressed in standard C++ 2011, and explore how to generate generic unit tests, by treating the axioms as code to be evaluated with test data. We also show a generic way to generate test data for axiom-based testing in C++ 2011.

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Modern development practices encourage extensive testing of code while it is still under development, using unit tests to check individual code units in isolation. Such tests are typically case-based, checking a likely error scenario or an error that has previously been identified and fixed. Coming up with good test cases is challenging, and focusing on individual tests can distract from creating tests that cover the full functionality.Axioms, known from program specification, allow for an alternative way of generating test cases, where the intended functionality is described as rules or equations that can be checked automatically. Axioms are proposed as part of the concept feature of the upcoming C++0x standard.In this paper, we describe how tests may be generated automatically from axioms in C++ concepts, and supplied with appropriate test data to form effective automated unit tests.

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