About me

Hi,

I'm currently working as a software developer in the logistics industry in San Francisco. 
My aim is to impact billions of people's live for the better and make the world a better place.

Cheers,
Vignesh

Go lang: Return True specified Pct% of time

When writing test for state machines, I came across a need for a helper that would all call flow into a path some percentage% of times.

Eg:

func TestSelfDrivingCar_BasicRun(t *testing.T) {
    car := NewMockCar(t)
    car.Start()
    if (/* 50% probability that this will happen */) {
        car.SimulateLidarFailure()        
    } else if /* 25% probability that this will happen */ {
        car.SimulateVisionFailure()
    } else {
        /* 25% probability that this will happen*/
        car.SimulateGearBoxFailure()
    }
    car.VerifySafeTrajectory()
}

You can write a small Go helper like this:

package testutils

import (
  "math/rand"
  "time"
)

// Odds returns True to pct% number of Check() calls
type Odds interface {
  Check() bool
}

// odds returns `true` pct% of times
type odds struct {
  randgen *rand.Rand
  pct     int
}

// NewOdds returns a odds instance with the given percent vaule
func NewOdds(pct int) Odds {
  src := rand.NewSource(time.Now().UnixNano())
  return &odds{
    randgen: rand.New(src),
    pct:     pct,
  }
}

// Check returns True to pct% of Check() calls
func (o *odds) Check() bool {
  return o.randgen.Intn(100) < o.pct
}

Usage:

func TestSelfDrivingCar_BasicRun(t *testing.T) {
    odds50pct, odds25pct := NewOdds(50), NewOdds(25)
    car := NewMockCar(t)
    car.Start()
    if odds50pct.Check() {
        car.SimulateLidarFailure()        
    } else if odds25pct.Check() {
        car.SimulateVisionFailure()
    } else {
        /* 25% probability that this will happen*/
        car.SimulateGearBoxFailure()
    }
    car.VerifySafeTrajectory()
}

ps: No, I don't work on self-driving cars - this is just a code sample :)