Standardize use of assert keyword
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Key: MAHOUT-189
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-189
Project: Mahout
Issue Type: Improvement
Affects Versions: 0.2
Reporter: Sean Owen
Assignee: Sean Owen
Priority: Minor
Fix For: 0.3
This is another one of my concept issues, and I'm posting this for discussion.
It can be shot down or modified.
I believe the assert keyword is for declaring conditions that can't be false in
a bug-free program. They are checks that are enabled during development -- to
find out when the program isn't bug-free! -- but disabled in production, for
performance. Since, of course, they'll always be true right?
So, in particular, they are never for checking arguments to a non-private
method. I see a number of cases where asserts are used for argument checking.
This is bad, since these checks will be disabled in production!
If this is a reasonable position, then I volunteer to review all uses of assert
and change many to some kind of if-statement plus IllegalArgumentException.
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