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Where exactly does the "# title-format:" comment go? Lint still warns after I added one

⚠ features/auth/login.feature:15  outline/title-format  Scenario Outline has no "# title-format:" comment; examples will be titled "Example #N".

# title-format: <username> → <error>

@ui @regression
Scenario Outline: Failed login shows a clear error
  When I login with "<username>" and "<password>"
  Then I should see the login error "<error>"

  Examples:
    | username        | password     | error                                   |
    | locked_out_user | secret_sauce | Sorry, this user has been locked out.   |
    | standard_user   | wrong        | Username and password do not match      |

3 answers

• 25votes✓

  Accepted answer

  Yes. The comment is only picked up if it sits inside the outline's own span — from two lines above the Scenario Outline: keyword down to the last row of the last Examples: table. Yours is three lines up, above the tag line, so it falls one line outside the window and belongs to nothing.

  Put it directly above Examples:, which is also where it reads best:

  gherkinCopy

  @ui @regression
  Scenario Outline: Failed login shows a clear error
    When I login with "<username>" and "<password>"
    Then I should see the login error "<error>"
  
    # title-format: <username> → <error>
    Examples:
      | username        | password     | error                                   |
      | locked_out_user | secret_sauce | Sorry, this user has been locked out.   |
      | standard_user   | wrong        | Username and password do not match      |

  The match is case-insensitive and tolerates missing space after the hash, so #Title-Format: also counts — but the position is not negotiable.

  LHanswered by Lena Hartwig10,388 · 9 Aug 2023
• 11votes

  It is worth doing rather than suppressing. Without the comment, a failing row is reported as Example #3 and you have to open the feature file and count table rows to find out which data broke. With it, the failure reads locked_out_user → Sorry, this user has been locked out. and the report tells you the answer.

  The placeholders are the column names in angle brackets, same as in the steps, and you can put literal text around them.

  RKanswered by Renata Kohl608 · 10 Aug 2023
• 4votes

  Late addition for anyone who finds this while cleaning up an old project: it is a warning, so it never blocks a run — unless somebody has --strict in the pipeline, in which case all warnings become exit 3 and this is usually the one that trips first.

  PVanswered by Priya Venkateshmaintainer29,604 · 4 Sept 2023