Question

When programming in a scripting language (Python, Perl, Ruby or R), I try to write functions and keep them in separate files to keep my code modular.

For debugging, I often put the arguments of the function inside the function body and un-comment them as soon as I'm done.

Moreover, I often place a call to the function right after its definition, which I also uncomment when I'm done testing.

So in the end, my file looks like this

def add(a, b):
    # a = 1
    # b = 2
    c = a + b
    return c

# add(1, 2)

Is there a more elegant way to achieve this?

Moreover, I think common practice would be to remove these comments when shipping the code to others. Is there a way to achieve this in a JavaDoc like manner, while keeping "real" comments (i.e. not uncommented code)?

I should mention, that I often write wrapper functions around calls to plot functions in Matplotlib or R (ggplot, etc) and since in these cases the output is a graph, it doesn't fit so well into test-driven development frameworks.

Answer 1

The proper way would be to write some unit tests.
If you want to have your tests very close to a source code, you should check out doctest module, it allows you to run tests placed directly in doc comments.
Neat thingy.
Edit: In yours example it would look like this:

def add(a, b): 
    """ Returns sum of a and b

    >>> add(1, 2)
    3

    """
    c = a + b
    return c

And run the tests like this:

python -m doctest -v yourFile.py

Script Programming: Using arguments to develop functions in separate files

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