Re: [boost] expected/result/etc

Subject: Re: [boost] expected/result/etc
From: Gavin Lambert (gavinl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-02-11 00:23:10

On 11/02/2016 15:08, Emil Dotchevski wrote:
> Dereferencing a null shared_ptr is something that easily could happen at
> runtime. Are you saying that it shouldn't assert in this case? Are you
> saying that that assert is useless? Are you saying that the correct design
> is to throw? Or is the correct design to assert and throw?

I answered that in the next paragraph:

On 11/02/2016 14:11, I wrote:
> You could assert *and* throw (or abort, if you don't know how to
> recover from it), although arguably the assert is less useful if
> you're repeating the same condition outside the assert anyway. But
> you can't just slap an assert in and call it a day, at least not for
> this sort of condition.

Or you could just throw.  I'm not convinced that the assert itself adds 
any particular value, aside from possibly being more in-your-face when 
running a debug build.  (But thrown exceptions can be equally in your 
face in both debug and release builds if you have a debugger attached, 
and if throwing exceptions is unusual so you haven't disabled "break on 
exception throw".)