By ChuckAllison | Jun 29, 2026 05:44 PM | Tags: None

The framework consists of a single header file and demonstrates how expression stringizing, file/line reporting, and exception testing can be implemented with only a handful of macros and functions. The article also examines limitations of the original design and discusses how modern C++ features such as inline variables and modules affect the implementation.

Automated Unit Testing On-The-Cheap: Part 1

by Chuck Allison

From the article:

When Extreme Programming was all the rage in the late 1990s, automated unit testing was still a relatively fresh idea for many working software developers. JUnit and CppUnit emerged as the leading test frameworks for Java and C++, but I wanted something even simpler—code that students could understand and that was easy to use.

I thought I’d achieved it in the well-received article I wrote for the C/C++ Users journal in September 2000, The Simplest Automated Unit Test Framework That Could Possibly Work.

But I was wrong.