Cucumber Scenario : giving an empty String as value of parameter in a scenario step

Question

I have a step implemented like this:

@When("I add an attribute named '(.+)' with unit '(.+)' to the item named '(.+)'")
public void addAttributeToAndItem(String attributeName, String unitName, String itemName){
     .....
}

in my Cucumber Scenario, i would like to add and attribute not having a unit, so the value of "unit name" should be and empty String. how can I specify this empty String in to my Scenario step.

I tried this one:

    Scenario: add attribute to an item
        When  I add an attribute named 'Color' with unit ' ' to the item named ' Car'

but it does not work. The ' ' is always seem as a value (a space) and not an empty string. please can somebody help me?

Solution

You can change it to '' but then since (.+) will match at least one of anything, using '' will not match the step.

Try using (.*) in your step definition which will match an empty string i.e. ''