On Monday, 10 November 2014 at 10:27:19 UTC, bearophile wrote:
In practice I prefer to avoid using hacks like setting a NDEBUG. It's better to have differently named operators if their behavour is different. So it's better to keep the assert() as it is commonly used (and I'd like it to refuse a not pure expression). And add another operator, like strong_assert() for the NDEBUG=strong behavour. (And if you can't live with it, you can also add a strict_assert()). Changing the behavour of asserts just changing a global constant is silly because what matters is the semantics the programmer gives to the assert he/she/shi is using. So giving them different names is much better.
In my experience asserts don't show such distinction, and it's impractical to decide such things in advance. So I think, a compiler switch makes more sense.
