When to use assert

[Roy Smith]

In article <528871d5$0$29975$c3e8da3$5496439d at news.astraweb.com>,
 Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:

> * Don't use assert for any error which you expect to recover from.
>   In other words, you've got no reason to catch an AssertionError
>   exception in production code.

Which leads to another reason for using asserts...

Every once in a while, I'll get into a situation where something is 
happening that I just can't understand.  If a given pice of code is 
being called, there's NO WAY the program should be exhibiting the 
behavior it's exhibiting.  But, there's also NO WAY that piece of code 
can't be getting called.

So, I stick "assert 0" in the code an re-run the program to see if I get 
an AssertionError.  If I do, then I know the code is being run.  If I 
don't then I know it's not.  Either way, I know more about what's going 
on than I did before.  Once I know what's going on, I remove the assert.