When generating Arbitrary
recursive structures, QuickCheck is often a bit too eager and generates sprawling, enormous random examples. These are undesirable as they usually don't better check the properties of interest and can be very slow. Two solutions are
Use things like the size parameter (
sized
function) andfrequency
function to bias the generator toward small trees.Use a small-type oriented generator like those in
smallcheck
. These try to exhaustively generate all "small" examples and thus help to keep the size of the tree down.
To clarify the sized
and frequency
method of controlling generation size, here's an example RoseTree
data Rose a = It a | Rose [Rose a]
instance Arbitrary a => Arbitrary (Rose a) where
arbitrary = frequency
[ (3, It <$> arbitrary) -- The 3-to-1 ratio is chosen, ah,
-- arbitrarily...
-- you'll want to tune it
, (1, Rose <$> children)
]
where children = sized $ \n -> vectorOf n arbitrary
It can be done even more simply with a different Rose
formation by very carefully controlling the size of the child list
data Rose a = Rose a [Rose a]
instance Arbitrary a => Arbitrary (Rose a) where
arbitrary = Rose <$> arbitrary <*> sized (\n -> vectorOf (tuneUp n) arbitrary)
where tuneUp n = round $ fromIntegral n / 4.0
You could do this without referencing sized
, but that gives the user of your Arbitrary
instance a knob to ask for larger trees if needed.