The Use of assert() in SQLite

Re:The Use of assert() in SQLite by catlifeonmars on Friday April 26, 2019 @10:00PM (#19763302)

It’s far better to let the caller decide. As a user of a library, I absolutely do not want a library terminating my process. Sure, some programs can benefit from this, but some programs need to guarantee that they keep running. Being able to recover (Go’s counterpart to panic()) allows the caller to decide which behavior they want.

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Re:The Use of assert() in SQLite by hermitdev on Friday April 26, 2019 @10:38PM (#19763423)

I'm not sure I agree. There's a very, very small limited set of conditions that a client can recover from a condition that would trigger an assertion failure. Dont want an abort? Then use the release libs where those have been preprocesed out.

Conversely, at a former employer we used a set of 3rd party database libs for ODBC on Linux that for the smallest config error would emit nothing to stderr and call exit(1) from a shared lib. that was beyond annoying

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Re:The Use of assert() in SQLite by catlifeonmars on Friday April 26, 2019 @10:50PM (#19763452)

I was afraid someone would mention preprocessing out the asserts :)

That also has its advantages, but would argue that it is impossible to selectively opt in or out.

Honestly, for a well tested piece of code, the point is moot, since the assert(s) will never evaluate false anyway.

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Re:The Use of assert() in SQLite by hermitdev on Saturday April 27, 2019 @10:12PM (#19768863)

> I was afraid someone would mention preprocessing out the asserts :)

Problem is, you need to understand what you're using, and like it or not, assert is defined as a macro by the C standard. And, assert is conditionally defined (and it's not the only conditionally defined macro).

I know its long, verbose, and dry; but if you want to understand C (or C++ for that matter), you really need to read the ISO standards that correspond to the implantation.

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Re:The Use of assert() in SQLite by drb91 on Sunday April 28, 2019 @01:33AM (#19769533)

You can also easily enable runtime failures so the point is indeed moot.

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Re:The Use of assert() in SQLite by int_19h on Monday April 29, 2019 @01:10AM (#19775983)

If you're in the same process as the code that had its invariant fail, how can you ensure that your process is in a safe state afterwards? A failed invariant, by definition, means that you're in uncharted territory - any anticipated failures are (assuming proper design) reported via the usual error mechanisms.

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