From: Tom Link <sanobast-rubyforum@...>
Date: 2007-08-02T18:10:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there a standard "assert" idiom in Ruby?

> Then you can do:
>  >> assert {3==3}
> => nil
>  >> assert("This test will fail") {false}
> AssertionError: This test will fail
>          from (irb):24:in `assert'
>          from (irb):29
>  >> assert { 3>=1 }
> => nil

If implemented this way, assert comes with a potential speed penalty. 
This is why such an assert feature usually implies a command line option 
to ignore assertions in production mode (eg in Eiffel). In ruby this can 
in theory be done by using the method_added hook or similar. The code 
could then look like this

    pre {|a, b| a > 0 && b > 0}
    post {|r| r > 0}
    def foo(a, b)
        a + b
    end

When a flag isn't set, pre & post could simply be ignored. There are 
some libraries around that try to achieve this but IMHO they all have 
some shortcoming. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

I think that a general way to define such wrappers had to be part of 
ruby core language in order to get this right.

If ruby were lisp, you could define your own def_by_contract. But AFAIK 
blocks cannot take optional arguments, which makes this currently 
impossible (or not so useful).

Regards,
Thomas.
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