I finally added Perlclip to my tray. I use it several times a week when I have to test text field inputs on my AUT. Among other things, this helpful little tool, created by James Bach, allows one to generate a text string with a specific character count. That alone is not very cool. However, the fact that the generated text string is comprised of numbers that indicate the count of the following astrisk is way cool.
Example: If I create a "counterstring" of 256 characters, I get a string on my clipboard that can be pasted. The last portion of the string looks like this...
12*216*220*224*228*232*236*240*244*248*252*256*
Each number is telling you the character number of its following astrisk. Thus, the last astrisk is character #256. The last "6" is character #255. Get it? So if you don't have a boundary requirement for a text input field, just paste in something huge and examine the string that got saved. If the last portion of the saved string looks like this...
0*43*46*49*52*55*58*61*6
...your AUT only accepted the first 62 characters.
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- Eric Jacobson
- Atlanta, Georgia, United States
- My typical day: get up, maybe hit the gym, drop my kids off at daycare, listen to a podcast or public radio, do not drink coffee (I kicked it), test software or help others test it, break for lunch and a Euro-board game, try to improve the way we test, walk the dog and kids, enjoy a meal with Melissa, an IPA, and a movie/TV show, look forward to a weekend of hanging out with my daughter Josie, son Haakon, and perhaps a woodworking or woodturning project.

In all of the time I've wasted reading your stupid blog this is the 2nd thing I've found useful/neat so far. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks for the um, compliment.
Very nice blog, it's bookmarked. Keep on posting!
Thanks for your tips.