there were a discussion recentrly about verifying arguments of assertion macros while checks are turned off
i've got an idea of how to check the argument(s) and guarantee zero code size and runtime overhead
Hi, This is a good addition to assertions, but once we decide that we are improving assertions, there is much more that needs an improvement. Most of them are listed in the thread on Contract++ library (proposed for Boost) that you are already referring to. But let me list the potential improvements here. 1. If the expression in assertion throws an exxception, this should also be considered an assertion failure. Otherwise evaluating or not evaluating an assertion may render different program behavior. You can implement that by wrapping the expression with a try-catch block; but then assertion is a statement rather than an expression. Personally I think it is even better that an assert in a statement and it cannot be a subexpression of a bigger expression, but it no longer complies to assertion interface. Lambdas have the capability of changing statements into expressions, but we do not have them yet. 2. Be able to disable some assertions, but not all, e.g. I want the following assert in my code never to execute: assert<low_level>( is_sorted( v.begin(), v.end() ) ); find_logarithmic( v.begin(), v.end(), val ); Simply because it may be too slow even in debug. 3. I may want to disable even syntax checking in order for my compilation to run faster. I guess we should also consider user that prefer slower applications that compile faster 4. Make sure that the expression does not access any global variables. Well, we shouldn't really forbid that but give it as an option for the programmers that like "functional style" programming. I don't know how to do that now, but with lambdas, I believe it is posible with empty capture lists. 5. At least try to limit the possibility of the expression having any side effect. Contract++ ttries to do it by enforcing the const correctness of some inputs. Perhaps, even the old assert is left alone and some super-assert like the one from Concept++ should be incorporated into Boost and be the preferred way of veryfing user assumptions. Regards, &rzej