On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 12:27 PM, Michael Foord <fuzzy...@voidspace.org.uk> wrote: > On 28/04/2011 09:34, Terry Reedy wrote: >> >> On 4/28/2011 3:54 AM, Tarek Ziadé wrote: >>> >>> Hello >>> >>> I removed some assert calls in distutils some time ago because the >>> package was not behaving correctly when people were using Python with >>> the --optimize flag. In other words, assert became a full part of the >>> code logic and removing them via -O was changing the behavior. >>> >>> In my opinion assert should be avoided completely anywhere else than >>> in the tests. If this is a wrong statement, please let me know why :) >> >> My understanding is that assert can be used in production code but only to >> catch logic errors by testing supposed invariants or postconditions. It >> should not be used to test usage errors, including preconditions. In other >> words, assert presence or absence should not affect behavior unless the code >> has a bug. > > Agreed. We should ideally have buildbots doing test runs with -O and -OO. R. > David Murray did a lot of work a year ago (or so) to ensure the test run > passes with -OO but it easily degrades.. > > There are a couple of asserts in unittest (for test discovery) but I only > use them to provide failure messages early. The functionality is unchanged > (and tests still pass) with -OO. > > All the best,
I'll try to add a useful report on "bad asserts" in the bug tracker. I am replying again to this on Python-ideas because I want to debate on assert :) Cheers Tarek _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
