Clarity vs. code reuse/generality

[Robert Kern]

On 2009-07-10 11:50, J. Cliff Dyer wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-07-10 at 02:57 +0000, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:28:04 +0100, Nobody wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:57:15 -0300, Gabriel Genellina wrote:
>>>
>>>> Nobody says you shouldn't check your data. Only that "assert" is not
>>>> the right way to do that.
>>> "assert" is not the right way to check your *inputs*. It's a perfectly
>>> reasonable way to check data which "should" be valid, as well as a way
>>> to document what variables are supposed to contain.
>> Where are those variables coming from?
>>
>> The distinction really boils down to this:
>>
>> * asserts should never fail. If there is any chance that an assertion
>> might fail outside of test suites, then don't use assert.
>>
>
> I'm no expert, but the more I read this thread, and the more I think on
> it, the more I believe that asserts don't really need to exist outside
> of test suites.

Actually, there is a good argument that one shouldn't use an assert statement in 
test suites: code can have bugs that only show up under -O so you want to be 
able to run your test suite under -O.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco