Re: Assertions in Ada

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Jeff said

<<another post by R. Dewar. The package provides checking even with
compilers that don't support pragma Assert. The advantage of the pragma
is that you can use it in a declarative region, where a procedure call
is not allowed. I considered also providing a function for use in
declarative regions, but didn't, because I expect optimization to
eliminate the unused constants I would declare with the function.>>


The constants could be eliminated, but not their initializing expressions
if they have potential side effects, which the assert call most surely
does, so your fear of being done in by the optimizer here is groundless.

Incidentally, GNAT also provides pragma Debug:

  pragma Debug (procedure-call-statement);

which is a procedure call that can be turned on or off by an external
compiler switch, and which can occur in a declarative region. This
allows more general processing than the assert pragma.