FlexUnit's Test Theories: Don't Bother

I've just been playing around with FlexUnit 4's nifty new "Test Theories"… And I have come to the conclusion that, right now, they are basically worthless.

Here's why:

• They aren't documented. At all. There are approximately two examples on the internet, and the wiki page is a joke. Nothing explains what algorithm is used to calculate which DataPoints are applied to which theories.
• They make test error messages less helpful. If a a theory fails, instead of getting a helpful error message like "Theory `checkUrl("this is a bad url")` failed with message: could not determine protocol", it gives a message like this: "checkUrl urls[1]". Yea, thanks guys.
• They don't do anything "cool". At all. It would be cool if, given five data points, five distinct tests would be generated. It would be cool if one data point could fail while others succeed. Heck, anything which would make them better than a for loop would be cool. But, alas…

So, don't waste your time on Theories just yet. For now, just use a for loop:

[Test]
public function runTestsOnData():void {
    for each (datum in testData)
        doSomeTest(datum);
}

Or, if you want to test the cartesian product of a set of data, use my handy cartesian product function:

[Test]
public function runTestsOnCartesianProduct():void {
    for each (data in cartesian_product(testData0, testData1))
        doSomeTest.apply(this, data);
}

Followup: as Alan (see comments) said, what I really want is a parameterized testrunner. So I've gone ahead and written one. See my post on a Parameterized Testrunner for FlexUnit.