assert semantic change proposal

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 8/6/2014 5:14 AM, "Marc Schütz" <schuetzm at gmx.net>" wrote:
> We're not living in an ideal world, unfortunately. It is bad enough that
> programs are wrong as they are written, we don't need the compiler to transform
> these programs to do something that is still wrong, but also completely
> different. This would make your goal of fixing the program very hard to achieve.
> In an extreme case, a small error in several million lines of code could
> manifest at a completely different place, because you cannot rely on any
> determinism once undefined behaviour is involved.

You are technically correct, and I used to worry about that. But after using 
assert()s for 30 years, I can only think of this happening once. assert()s tend 
to trip very shortly after the actual error occurred. Of course, there's a bit 
of an art to appropriate placement of those assert()s.


> It seems like
> the opposite: instead of trying to prove the assertions statically, they're
> going to be believed without verification.

The point of an assert is it is something the programmer says must be true, not 
the compiler.