18

As an old C programmer, I use lots of asserts in my code. Now I want to globally switch them off to speed things up. What is the best practice way to do that?

opus111
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2 Answers2

14

There is no built-in option / command line flag to disable @asserts globally, yet(!).

For now, you can define a @myassert macro which, depending on a global switch, is a no-op or a regular @assert:

asserting() = false # when set to true, this will enable all `@myassert`s

macro mayassert(test)
  esc(:(if $(@__MODULE__).asserting()
    @assert($test)
   end))
end

f(x) = @mayassert x < 2

(taken from https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assert-alternatives/24775/14)

carstenbauer
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3

You could put your @assert statements in a @debug block. Then the @assert call is desactivated, unless you activate debugging either globally (ENV["JULIA_DEBUG"] = "all") or just for your module (ENV["JULIA_DEBUG"] = "NameOfYourModule")

julia> @debug begin
          @assert 1==2
       end
       #or 
       @debug @assert 1==2 # assert is not called

julia> ENV["JULIA_DEBUG"] = "all" # enable debugging
"all"

julia> @debug begin
          @assert 1==2
       end
┌ Error: Exception while generating log record in module Main at REPL[4]:1
│   exception =
│    AssertionError: 1 == 2
│    Stacktrace:
│     [1] top-level scope at REPL[4]:2
│     [2] top-level scope at logging.jl:319
|     ...
└ @ Main REPL[4]:1
Alex338207
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  • Unfortunately, violation of the assertion no longer leads to program termination, but rather the log message `Error: Exception while generating log record in module`. – Jim Garrison Sep 10 '20 at 13:54