debug_util_flexible_assert

https://github.com/pestophagous/debug_util_flexible_assert

Quick Explanation

This header provides FASSERT, which is a cross-platform way to encode assertions into your codebase that are "more flexible" than those provided by <cassert> [1].

Here are some key differences:

• FASSERT can be enabled/disabled independently of NDEBUG, which is useful if you wish to keep assertions enabled even in a "release" or "production" build.
• FASSERT produces interactive assertion failures, allowing you to choose to ignore a failure (and therefore to attempt to continue execution) when your FASSERT-ed assumption is violated
• FASSERT interactive failures are presented in a platform-appropriate way, intended to work well across the following: Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
• FASSERT can be suppressed at program launch by using export FLEX_SUPALL_ASRT=1 (allowing you to skip all assertion-checking without recompiling the executable)
• FASSERT can also be stripped at compilation by passing -DFLEX_DISABLE_ASSERT to the build.

[1] https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/error/assert

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Example Usage

FASSERT always takes exactly 2 arguments:

1. the logical expression asserted to always be true in a correct program, and
2. a message to be shown to the tester/user/coder when the expression-check "fails" (aka computes to false).

    // execution will pause at next line if x<=0
    FASSERT( x > 0, "passing 0 or negative to this code is an error" );

FFAIL can be used as shorthand for assert(false):

...to mark blocks of code that should never be reached. FFAIL takes a single argument, which is the failure message.

     if( something_that_should_never_happen )
     {
         FFAIL( "do not want to get here" );
         return;
     }

Helper functions can disable assertions (CODE SMELL HIGH ALERT!)

The following would be a CODE SMELL in most cases. However, it may be useful for portions of unit test suites or in other very limited use cases.

The PREFERRED way to disable assertions would be one of either:

1. disabled at launch with export FLEX_SUPALL_ASRT=1
2. disabled at compile time with -DFLEX_DISABLE_ASSERT

For completeness, here is the SMELLY way to programmatically disable/reenable assertions:

        Suppress_All_Assertions();
        // ...
        // Any code called here that would normally assert will now omit assertion-checking
        // ...
        UnSuppress_All_Assertions();