Arrange Act Assert Alternatives

Question

The general question is are there alternative patterns to AAA for unit testing? If, yes, would be very interesting to see some examples and hear about their pros and cons.

And as the simplest example of AAA test (in c#, using var for the sake of simplicity):

// Arranging
var annualSalary = 120000M;
var period = 3; // for a quarter profit
var calc = new SalaryCalculator();

// Acting
var result = calc.CalculateProfit(annualSalary, period); 

// Assertion
Assert.IsEqual(40000, result);

Answer 1

I like something that is not so much an alternative to AAA, but rather a variation. I think of it as Arrange-Assert(not)-Act-Assert, but others have called it a Guard Assertion. The idea is to have an assertion that ensures the desired result of the Act is not already present before the act. There's a good discussion of it here.

Answer 2

There is another notation from Behavior-driven development: Given - When - Then. Examples for c# is SpecFlow and for Jasmin for JavaScript. Both resource are full of examples of using this notation. The GWT approach is typically used in a Behavior Driven Development and Aspect Oriented Programming.