Misleading contract syntax

[Pelle Månsson]

On 03/04/2010 02:24 PM, Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> Norbert Nemec wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> following the recent thread on contracts, I come to the conclusion
>> that the current syntax is misleading and counterproductive.
>>
>> * The concept of a contract is an expression, not a statement.
>> * A contract should *never* have side effects, otherwise debugging
>> code may behave differently from release mode (which is the ultimate
>> nightmare).
>> * Any reasonable example with contracts contains just a list of
>> assertions.
>> * There is a fundamental distinction between assertions and contracts
>> (see recent thread: contracts are part of interface design, assertions
>> are computable comments)
>>
>> => Why are contracts defined as lists of statements in the first
>> place? Defining contracts as side-effect free expressions would solve
>> all of the above problems at once, decoupling the concepts of
>> assertions and contracts and resulting in safer, much more concise code.
>
> int binary_search(int[] array, int n);
>
> Write the precondition of this function using only ors and ands (and no
> helper functions).

Why should you not be allowed helper functions?