[Pvfs2-developers] use of assert

[Walter B. Ligon III]

I'm wanting to check the group's collective wisdom on the use of assert 
as opposed to a comparable check and error via gossip.

It seems to me it is desireable to use assert in any situation that is 
considered so erroneous that the code cannot reasonably continue.

I'm running into a few situations where its not immediately clear 
whether this is the case or not.  For example, if someone calls a 
function I've written to free a state machine data structure and the 
pointer is NULL, things are very, very wrong.  I *think* this warrants 
an assert, but I just get concerned that with so many asserts in the 
code we might be bailing more quicly than we should.

So, I'm just looking for a sanity check.

comments?

Walt
-- 
Dr. Walter B. Ligon III
Associate Professor
ECE Department
Clemson University