Basic Tests

A few minutes after you submit your assignment on MarkUs, you will be sent an email containing some feedback on your submission (or, log in to MarkUs, choose an assignment and under Submissions, Run Basic Tests on a file or see Test Summary under Assignment History). The Basic Tests determine whether your assignment is gradeable by our scripts. For example:

  • Does it have the correct file names?
  • Does it have the correct function names?
  • Do functions have the correct number of parameters?
  • Are the values the function produces in the correct format?
  • Etc.

Getting a mark of less than perfect on the Basic Tests means that you WILL FAIL many if not all of the automated tests, resulting in a very low mark for the program.

On the other hand, getting a perfect mark on the Basic Tests does not guarantee a perfect mark for the program. Far from it! After the due date we run many additional tests to verify that your program produces the correct results.

For example, the Basic Tests may verify that your program produces an integer — any integer. The marking scripts may test that it produces a specific integer such as 42.

You should take the Basic Test results very seriously. Failure to check the results, or ignoring the errors in the results, is not a valid reason for a re-mark request or special marking consideration.

It may take several minutes for you to receive the Basic Test email. If you submit the assignment at the last minute (for example, a few seconds before the due date) then by the time you get the Basic Test results, the due date will have already passed and you won’t be able to fix any errors reported by the Basic Test.

Try your best to start assignments early, submit early and submit often because:

  • It serves as a backup in case something goes wrong with your computer. Just download it from MarkUs!
  • You have something for us to mark, even if something happens that prevents you from submitting before the deadline (e.g. your computer crashes, other commitments surface, you get an unexpected hot date, etc.)
  • If you have a really weird problem, course staff may look at your submission and help you better.