Re: next "big" language?? (disagree)

[Dale Stanbrough <dale@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>]

Robert Dewar writes:

"There is nothing wrong with either of these models of assertions (or with
 any of several different models), but they are VERY different, and what we
 found in practice is that people had very strong opinions that an assert
 in the language should mean one or other of these, and that it was silly
 to suggest any alternative meaning -- not exactly a recipe for agreement,
 or for the devising of a language feature that would not cause a lot of
 confusion."

Obviously if there are two concepts, then we should have two names. For
example (in Ada) we could stick with

	pragma Assert(x);

for the traditional "please check this really is the case" assertion
and introduce

	pragma Fact(x);

(or some other name) for the "this really is true, trust me, and make
appropriate optimisations" type assertion. Can anyone think of a better
name (pragma Declare(x) is not available in Ada) than "Fact"?

Dale