There's a mistake in the analysis of the ternary operator in the assert that doesn't check anything. Not only does the ternary ?: operator have lower precedence than the comparison <= operator, but it also has lower precedence than the logical && operator. So the expression inside the assert doesn't resolve to (die_offset > 0), it resolves to either 0xffff or 0xffffffff, both of which are true. The assertion really doesn't check anything at all.