Re^6: Universal test flag

[zwon]

to actually be able to refactor you must first have a solid set of tests

And the exact problem with what you are trying to do is that it isn't solid. Suppose later you extract SMS sending code into a separate module, will your tests help you to find if you broke anything? No, because the code that may be broken by the change is being skipped in the test mode.

So what I would do, is to write solid test, and refactor code to pass it.

[ait]

I think we are talking about two different things here. I understand what you are saying but this is not the case that the SMS code is inside the function and later factored out (in fact the SMS part was a made-up example to illustrate). I'm talking about the the case where the sub you are testing calls something else and you want to skip that, the same way you may skip tests in your test harness.