Duplicated stepdefs do not throwing any error?!

[shuai-zh]

I made two step definitions with completely the same regex in 2 different javascript files under the step_definitions folder as following:
a.js

...
 this.When(/^I visit "([^"]*)"$/, function (url, next) {
        console.log('The first one!');
    });
...

b.js

...
 this.When(/^I visit "([^"]*)"$/, function (url, next) {
        console.log('The second one with totally different implementation~');
    });
...

When I ran the test, I figured out that cucumber-js load the 2 files in alphabetical order, so the working definition was actually in 'b.js'.

I thought it would be unsafe not throwing any error(such as 'Duplicated step definitions') because when we deal with large amount of stepdefs, we cannot guarantee we will not accidentally override previous stepdefs and that would certainly cause lots of troubles.

Did I do it wrong or it is actually an issue with the cucumber-js?

[sajesh2686]

True Cucumber always picks the reg exp found in first step definition. you have to be careful with the reg exp defined in feature file and the step definition.

Am not sure if we have any alternate solution for this, but I usually suggest my team to be careful with this.

[shuai-zh]

@sajesh2686 I don't think that is something we can compromise with, team members can never be that careful enough.

[jbpros]

TL;DR: cucumber.js should throw an exception.

It is an issue in cucumber.js. Cucumber-ruby throws an error when two matches are found for a step. It also provides a --guess flag. @aslakhellesoy and I agreed that this flag should not be implemented. The reason for that is if a step is ambiguous for the machine, it probably is even more ambiguous for the people reading/writing those steps.

[dmeehan1968]

This now seems to have missed its planned release milestone. I'm still getting problems with this in 0.5.1.

[aslakhellesoy]

@dmeehan1968 would you be interested in sending a pull request to fix this?

[dmeehan1968]

Yes, happy to create a PR, but a bit short on time.

I had a bit of a look through the code to find the point where step defs are matched but couldn't find the relevant point.

If you can point me to the relevant routine/module that would be very helpful.

[jbpros]

@dmeehan1968 thanks! Have a look here:

cucumber-js/lib/cucumber/support_code/library.js

Line 52 in 9500c7c

lookupStepDefinitionByName: function lookupStepDefinitionByName(name) {

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