remove assert statement (Was: Re: PEP new assert idiom)

[Paul Rubin]

"John Roth" <newsgroups at jhrothjr.com> writes:
> I see assert as a statement of an invariant: each and every time
> I come here this *must* be true.  

Yes, that was the intention of the assert statement.  However, there's
a very great temptation to use it for a somewhat different purpose,
namely checking data validity.  When there's a great temptation to
misuse some feature to do X when it's really intended for Y, that's a
sign that it's time to add an equally convenient feature intended for
doing X.

> For me, an assert failing is a programing error in the caller, not
> in the method with the assert!  Trying to catch an assert is a misuse
> of what the statement provides.

There's a slight non-sequitur there.  Every large system contains
programming errors, and assert statements are a good way to detect the
errors.  If an assert fails and isn't caught, the system crashes.
Crashing a running system on detection of the slightest programming
error is not always an acceptable thing to do.  Sometimes you have to
log the error and try to recover from it, disable the feature where
the error happened until someone can figure out what went wrong, or
whatever; but not crash.  So you need to be able to catch assert
failures.