Nunit-console: Nunit Console Runner for .net Core not able to run categories with spaces in them

[stokescompchurch]

To reproduce this install the tool.

dotnet new tool-manifest
dotnet tool install NUnit.ConsoleRunner.NetCore --version 3.12.0-beta2

Make a test with a category with spaces in it.

[Test, Category("Multiple Word Category")]
public void MyTestWithCategoryMultipleWords()
{
     //test contents
     Console.WriteLine("Does this test run with multiple words?");
}

[Test, Category("OneWordCategory")]
public void MyTestWithCategoryOneWord()
{
    //test contents
     Console.WriteLine("Does this test run with one word?");
}

The test with one word works from the command line and the test with multiple words does not work from the commandline.
Here is what I am running in the commandline:

dotnet nunit TestAutomation/bin/Debug/netcoreapp3.1/TestAutomation.dll --where "cat == Multiple Word Category"

dotnet nunit TestAutomation/bin/Debug/netcoreapp3.1/TestAutomation.dll --where "cat == OneWordCategory"

Here is the output I get from commandline.

NUnit Console Runner 3.12.0-beta2
Copyright (c) 2021 Charlie Poole, Rob Prouse
Sunday, April 11, 2021 11:24:38 AM

Runtime Environment
   OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10.0.19042
  Runtime: .NET Core 3.1.13

Test Files
    NapiAutomation/bin/Debug/netcoreapp3.1/NapiAutomation.dll

Test Filters
    Where: cat == Multiple Word Category

Unexpected token 'Word' at position 16 in selection expression.

dotnet --version says 5.0.201
NuGet version 5.7.0.6726
csproj .net version: netcoreapp3.1
NUnit package version:
also this reference:

Windows 10 running from bash or command line gives same result.

[mikkelbu]

This is not related to .NET Core. One gets the same behaviour using the regular console and targeting e.g. framework 4.7.2. But I can make the filtering work by quoting the category - like

.\nunit3-console.exe TEST.dll --where "cat == 'Multiple Word Category'"

I've not updated the labels as I'm unsure if we should handle this better in the filtering code (automatically quoting sequnces with spaces, but this could break/affect existing users), perhaps we should also add some more text to the documentation
https://docs.nunit.org/articles/nunit/running-tests/Test-Selection-Language.html#usage-on-the-command-line

[CharliePoole]

FWIW I don't believe we ever _intentionally_ supported spaces in either the framework or the console runner, although it may have worked in some cases. In NUnit V2 the characters were restricted - for example '-' didn't work - but we never validated that in the constructor. With NUnit 3 we removed existing restrictions.

We could ask for the framework to disallow spaces, but maybe it's better to just document what you have to do when working with them. I don't think we should do any automatic quoting because _where_ expressions can be arbitrarily complex and I doubt we'll easily catch all the odd cases.

[stokescompchurch]

Documentation would be great.
I see why I was led to believe I didn't need single quotes around the Category.
I was using Nant before and now I am running it myself from the command line in a Azure Devops Pipeline so I won't be using Nant plus it isn't working with .net core yet.
Here is what I used to run it in Nant using .net framework 4.
<target name="nunitWithCategoryWebQA"> <echo message="Running Automationframework method: ${categoriesToRun}" /> <exec program="${nunit3Dir}" failonerror="true"> <arg value="${buildDir}\WebQa.dll" /> <arg value="--x86" /> <arg value="--result:${buildDir}\${WebQATestResults};format=nunit2" /> <arg value="--where &quot;cat==${categoriesToRun}&quot;" /> </exec> </target>
I think Nant was adding the single quotes around ${categoriesToRun} and I didn't realize it.