Clarity vs. code reuse/generality

[Terry Reedy]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:19:22 +0000, kj wrote:
> 
>> In <mGo3m.591$P5.76 at nwrddc02.gnilink.net> Alan G Isaac
>> <alan.isaac at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> 1. Don't use assertions to test argument values!
>> Out of curiosity, where does this come from?
> 
> Assertions are disabled when you run Python with the -O (optimise) flag. 
> If you rely on assertions to verify data, then any time the user runs 
> python with -O your code will be running without error checking.
> 
> assert should be used to verify program logic, not to sanitize data.

In other words, assertions should never happen, whereas your assertions 
could easily happen with 'bad' input. An example of program logic 
assertion would be 'assert <loop-invariant>' at the top of the loop. 
That would be useful for development, but would not be needed for 
production use of tested code.

tjr