OpenEuphoria

Re: Essential feature: assertions

• Posted by David Cuny <dcuny at LANSET.COM> Jan 29, 2001
• 600 views

George Henry wrote:

> <assorted flamebait about b&d features>
>
> Right now I would be happy with a simple assert()
> facility, such as any ANSI C compiler (or anything
> close to one) provides.

I think this would probably be a good thing to add. The addition of Derek's
with/without assert would be a requirement.

I've used asserts in Euphoria code before:

   global procedure assert( integer test, sequence msg )
      if not test then
         -- print message
         puts( 1, msg & "\n" )
         -- force traceback
         ? 1/0
      end if
   end procedure

In lieu of a "with/without assert" option, I just did a global replace of

   "assert("

with

   "-- assert("

There are obviously potential problems with asserts - for example, the test
may have unexepected side effects. Sometimes just changing the length of the
code or number of statments can have odd side effects. I still recall
struggling with Euphoria, trying to figure out why the interpreted version
of the code behaved differently than the bound version.

All things considered, it's probably more useful than not.

-- David Cuny


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