More on generating strings with random Unicode characters

Well, for those of you living outside the Pacific Northwest you are probably unaware of the recent wind storm with winds gusting to 60+ miles per hour that left more than 1 million people on the eastern side of the state without power. The damage was pretty extensive, and since I live in a fairly remote area I was without power for more than 7 days and without the Internet for almost 9 days. I do have a generator, but it hadn't been used in almost 4 years. Sure, I started it every 6 months for about 15 minutes each time, but after the first full day of operation the generator started doing wierd things. So, during the past week I have become pretty good at fixing generators (mine and my neighbors), tracing electrical systems, troubleshooting furnace problems, splitting a lot of firewood, cutting up fallen trees, and repairing fences.

After the sun set (which is quite early) I had little else to do (other than making sure nobody stole my generator), so inbetween stoking the fire I started developing a DLL for Unicode string generation in automated tests based on the GString utility. While reviewing the data tables I created for the GString utility with the Unicode Handbook I noticed some holes (OK...defects). Some of the boundaries for code ranges that are not assigned to any Unicode script group were incorrect. (That will teach me to use a web page with the listing put together by a web developer rather than using the Unicode handbook.) But, I also found a problem that prevented unassigned code points from being generated even if the Only use assigned code points check box was unchecked.So, the (hopefully final) update to GString is complete, including the GString.DLL! So, along with the massive overhaul of the Unicode data tables, the new GString package available from my personal website also includes a new DLL for anyone needing to generate strings of random Unicode characters in test automation. The GString zip file also includes detailed documentation on the utility and the dll usage. Let me know if you have any questions about the tool or using random string generation in your testing.

Well, now back to (mostly) normal life.