Timeline for C++ Binary Search
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
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| Aug 21, 2023 at 19:29 | comment | added | bst | @chux-ReinstateMonica that's a reasonable perspective. If that's the philosophy for whatever project you're working on, I can respect that. In my experience, asserting assumptions is extremely valuable, regardless of whether the programmer has control over them or not. I've caught countless bugs where the programmer intended one thing, but the code did something else, especially in C++ where so much takes place implicitly and so many operations are overridable. Add churn from maintenance and multiple programmers on top of that and assumptions break even more easily. | |
| Aug 21, 2023 at 19:21 | comment | added | chux | bst, The assertions that benefit most are the ones the function relies on and cannot control, like the values of parameters received - and that can be done once, outside the loop. An assert inside the loop is testing function logic, that is within the control of the programmer and is less needed. Every assert disturbs code at some level from the release version. Keeping the more critical aspects of the function un-asserted (e.g. inside the loop) increases consistency with the release version. | |
| Aug 21, 2023 at 15:29 | comment | added | bst |
@chux-ReinstateMonica because the loop changes the value of begin and end, so the assertion wants to ensure things remain sane. One could argue that the way those values are changed will never break the assertion from outside the loop, but the whole point of assertions is to verify assumptions and be humbly defensive. Trying to optimize that defeats the purpose.
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| Aug 20, 2023 at 14:38 | comment | added | chux |
Why assert in the loop? Would not assert(begin < end); while (begin != end) { ... achieve the same? (and allow for 1 less compare when in debug mode)
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| Aug 9, 2023 at 18:09 | history | edited | bst | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
typo
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| Aug 9, 2023 at 18:03 | history | edited | bst | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 17 characters in body
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| S Aug 9, 2023 at 17:57 | review | First answers | |||
| Aug 9, 2023 at 19:10 | |||||
| S Aug 9, 2023 at 17:57 | history | answered | bst | CC BY-SA 4.0 |