Difference between “fuzz testing” and “monkey test”

Question

I have recently been thinking of the difference between fuzz testing and monkey test. According to wiki, it seems monkey test is "only" a unit test and fuzz test isn't. Android has UI/Application Exerciser monkey and it doesn't seems like unit test.

Is there any difference between these testing methods?

Answer 1

UI/Application Exerciser Monkey is a fuzz testing tool. The name is probably related to the fact that it behaves as if a monkey uses your application. It might be also related to the fact that (from Wikipedia):

"The Monkey" was a Macintosh application developed by Steve Capps prior to 1983. It used journaling hooks to feed random events into Mac programs, and was used to test for bugs in MacPaint.

The bottom line is that Monkey test and Fuzz testing are different names for essentially the same thing. However, there might be one subtle difference: while Fuzz testing is more about using random data, Monkey testing is about random actions.