OK, I see what you mean. My question sprang partly from a perception that some people use “regression tests” and “unit tests” to mean two different things (that is, two different types of tests). So I partly interpreted your use of the term “regression tests” as meaning (amont other things) “not unit tests.”

My aspell on win32 just hangs are the IPC::Open2::open call. Not getting far on spelling this evening.

One specific comment: You write:

“…members of the … cpants.perl.org community believe that tests like Test::Pod and Test::Pod::Coverage should be public and included in the distribution. Those advocates say that rewarding authors with “Kwalitee” points when they include POD tests in their CPAN packages will encourage them to write better POD, which is better for everyone.”

I write good POD. When you print out the POD from some of my modules, it runs to 40+ pages. But I don’t always use the same “head1 some_sub()” structure picked up by Test::Pod::Coverage. Result: These modules get a big 0 on this aspect of “kwalitee.” But am I going to restructure that documentation just to satisfy the kwalitee fanatics? Hell, no! This is a case where the test should be private. Let the user read the documentation and judge it on its own merits!

Jim Keenan

The public tests I mention would be the unit tests. Definitely, unit tests are the most important — sometimes more important than the code itself. In the article I attempt to go a bit beyond unit tests for core algorithms and delve into unit tests for more human topics, like spelling.