See: http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/87099/Lib/test/test_random.py#l241

This test (and its match in MersenneTwister_TestBasicOps) is nearly always skipped by the 'if stop <= start: return' check; in a test with adding "print('skipped', i)" before the return and running test_random via regrtest with -F, i was 40 when the test returned about 21 out of 25 times.  It seems to have been this way since the test was added.

Was this intended?  It looks to me like perhaps the start and stop assignments are swapped; Serhiy suggested that perhaps stop was meant to have been added to start.  How is this test meant to work?

Nice catch!  That's insane.  `start` and `stop` should indeed be swapped, *and* the `return` should be `continue`.  I didn't write the test, but these things are obvious to my eyeballs ;-)

Maybe some documentation could help express the purpose of this test, but I was able to make the changes mentioned below and the test seems to work better than it used to. The test no longer returns if a value is 'skipped'. This is my first attempt at a patch so apologies if this is not perfect.

The patch looks good to me, Julian.  Have you signed a contributor agreement?  If you haven't done so yet and are planning on contributing anything more than the most trivial of changes, you'll need to do so (see http://www.python.org/psf/contrib/).

Awesome! I signed the contributor agreement today via "E-sign". I look forward to making more significant contributions soon :)

Hmm, actually, I take it back...this is half of the needed patch :).  There's another test method of the same name in MersenneTwister_TestBasicOps, with the same issue.  But this half looks good!  I'll leave a comment on Rietveld (which will send you a 'review' email) pointing out the other test.

Yup, the patch is semantically correct.  But I'd also swap the order of the `start =` and `stop =` lines - *everyone* expects `start` to be set first ;-)

That makes perfect sense :) Here is an updated patch. I also made the change to the other test of the same name in MersenneTwister_TestBasicOps

Original test was added in issue812202.

Just wanted to see if there was anything else I needed to do to get this patch rolling :)

Nope, your patch looks good, I just haven't gotten it committed yet :)

New changeset c8e138646be1 by Zachary Ware in branch '2.7':
Issue #19588: Fixed tests in test_random that were silently skipped most
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/c8e138646be1

New changeset c65882d79c5f by Zachary Ware in branch '3.3':
Issue #19588: Fixed tests in test_random that were silently skipped most
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/c65882d79c5f

New changeset 28ec217ce510 by Zachary Ware in branch 'default':
Issue #19588: Merge with 3.3
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/28ec217ce510

Thanks for the patch, Julian!