What's the actual use of 'fail' in JUnit test case?

Question

What\'s the actual use of \'fail\' in JUnit test case?

Answer 1

I think the usual use case is to call it when no exception was thrown in a negative test.

Something like the following pseudo-code:

test_addNilThrowsNullPointerException()
{
    try {
        foo.add(NIL);                      // we expect a NullPointerException here
        fail("No NullPointerException");   // cause the test to fail if we reach this            
     } catch (NullNullPointerException e) {
        // OK got the expected exception
    }
}