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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada.Execution_Time
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:23:12 -0500
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Date: 2010-12-20T22:23:12-05:00
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Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> writes:

> So add an assert operator that always yields True:
>
>     declare
>         Dummy: constant Boolean := assert some_expression; -- assert operator
>     begin
>         assert some_other_expression; -- assert statement
>     end;

If asserts had their own syntax, we could allow them wherever
we like -- "assert blah;" could be both a statement and
a declarative_item.

I really don't like having to declare dummy booleans.
It gets even more annoying when you have several.
What are you going to call them?  Dummy_1, Dummy_2,
and Dummy_3?  And then after some maintenance,
Dummy_1, Dummy_2_and_a_half, and Dummy_3?
Seems like an awful lot of noise -- assertions should
be easy!  (Of course, you might remember me complaining
that the declare/begin/end is just noise, too.)

Anyway, the strong syntactic separation between declarations
and statements makes no sense in a language where declarations
are executable code.  I think it's just wrong-headed thinking
inherited from Pascal.

> Though the use of "Assert" as an identifier in existing code is
> certainly an issue.

I've certainly written procedures called Assert that do
what you might expect.  This was quite common before
pragma Assert existed.

- Bob