Why assert is not a function?

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 3:37 AM Serhiy Storchaka <storchaka at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 03.03.21 01:24, Chris Angelico пише:
> > On Wed, Mar 3, 2021 at 10:22 AM Mirko via Python-list
> > <python-list at python.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Am 02.03.2021 um 23:09 schrieb Stestagg:
> >>> Ignoring the question about this feature being particularly useful, it
> >>
> >> It is useful because "assert" is primarily (if not purely and
> >> exclusive) a debugging tool during development and testing.
> >>
> >> In production code you don't want any asserts, but logging. Having
> >> "assert" being a function would make it much harder to get rid of it
> >> in production code.
> >>
> >
> > Really?
> >
> > if PRODUCTION:
> >     def assert(*a, **kw): pass
> >
> > would work if it were a function :)
>
> assert(expensive_computation())
>

Do you have any asserts like that, or is that a purely theoretical
complaint? I have never once seen anything that costly - usually it'll
be something like checking a length (and this isn't C's strlen, since
Python can get lengths of all built-in types quickly), or some simple
checks.

Having assert be a function would not make it much harder to get rid
of. It would just make it harder to get the text.

ChrisA