From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2004-11-18T07:44:13+09:00
Subject: Re: assert

On Thursday, November 18, 2004, 5:33:15 AM, Florian wrote:

> Wood, Jeff wrote:

>> It's a semantic thing, but you could also go with an #ensure name
>> But, I guess I have a question, why not just have a function that
>> switches asserts to either raise an exception or cause an IRB
>> session?  that way you could KNOW your code isn't going to break into
>> IRB in it's production environment, unless you specifically ask it
>> to...

> Problem with using assert() for the method name is that test/unit 
> already uses it for stating what a test ought to produce. It seems 
> likely that you will have test/unit style assert()s and breakpoint style
> assert()s (which I'd like to call assumptions) in the same code base.

And they are completely different things, so should not be toggled
from one to the other with a global switch.  A typical test case will
have dozens or hundreds of asserts, but only one or two breakpoints.
And the breakpoints are very temporary; once you've worked out what's
going on, you remove them.

Testing and debugging are very different.

Gavin