From: Florian Gross <flgr@...>
Date: 2004-11-18T09:53:15+09:00
Subject: Re: assert

Gavin Sinclair wrote:

>>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.

I agree with you here though I think it can still make sense to toggle 
between different implementations of assume(). For example it might be a 
good idea to log the failed assumption into a warning log file for 
production applications and so on.