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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com>
Subject: Re: Assertions
Date: 1999/05/21
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In article <7i27tt$hn@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com>,
  Richard D Riehle <laoXhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> I agree that it is possible that some assertions might be
> checkable at compile time.

That misses the point, Eiffel assertions are not about
checking (either at compile time or at run time). They
are formalized comments stating certain static properties
of the program. If one of these comments lies, this is a bug
in the program.

One of course wants to debug programs, so mechanisms like
testing assertions at run time etc are useful for debugging
the assertions (as well as the rest of the code).

But you really have to get out of the habit of thinking of
them as having much to do with the check-this-assertion-at
run-time type gizmo which is what most of this thread has
been discussing.

As I said earlier, assertions mean many different things to
different people :-)


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