Expenses exercise - last function error string with category name

marcaurele · May 25, 2025, 4:39pm

Hi,

In the Expenses exercise, the last function to implement display an example of the error message containing the missing category name:

// => 0, error(unknown category entertainment)

The test suite is not validating the content of the error message at all, only that an error is return (!= nil). I would suggest to either change the test suite to validate the content of the message or change the instruction to not output the category name.

For the 1st option, I already did a PR to add this more detailed test:

github.com/exercism/go

fix(expenses): enforce category name in error message

exercism:main ← marcaurele:expenses-detailed-error

opened 08:54PM - 23 May 25 UTC

marcaurele

+7 -3

## Expenses exercise The instructions are displaying the name of the category… in the error message of the last bullet point. The test case must validate that the category name is included in the error message. ## See - https://exercism.org/tracks/go/exercises/expenses - https://github.com/exercism/go/blob/5e937bc89205b28d45306c165d75ec4ed0324e30/exercises/concept/expenses/.docs/instructions.md?plain=1#L159

I understand that making the test validate the error string will make most of existing solutions to fail. So, I do not know what approach you usually take for such a case.