[boost] Re: Compile time assertions

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-02-14 15:12:42

At 09:58 PM 2/10/00 -0500, Dave Abrahams wrote:

>on 2/10/00 7:52 PM, Beman Dawes at beman_at_[hidden] wrote:
>
>Just my 2 cents on these, FWIW. I'm tired of discussions that flail
around
>trying to fulfill an unrealistic set of impossible goals.
>
>> (R1) Give an error message *at the line* where the assertion
>> fails.
>
>Highly compiler-dependent! No single implementation is *ever* likely
to
>satisfy this requirement! Also, some people want readability...
>CodeWarrior's error messages are often so dismal that it can be very
hard to
>accomplish anything that looks reasonable in this regard. On the up
side,
>either class or function templates (I forget which) do give an
instantiation
>backtrace when they fail to compile.

Agreed.  That isn't one of my requirements.  

>> (R4) No macros.
>
>What is the reason for this requirement? Just that we don't like
macros? I
>agree with the sentiment, but let's not be arbitrarily draconian. We
use
>them for #include guards. We use good old assert(); it works quite
well, and
>is always implemented with a macro.

The requirement is more like "No dangerous macros (presumably those
with names that are likely to conflict with user names)."

--Beman