NAME¶
assert - abort the program if assertion is false
SYNOPSIS¶
#include <assert.h>
void assert(scalar expression);
DESCRIPTION¶
If the macro
NDEBUG was defined at the moment
<assert.h> was
last included, the macro
assert() generates no code, and hence does
nothing at all. Otherwise, the macro
assert() prints an error message
to standard error and terminates the program by calling
abort(3) if
expression is false (i.e., compares equal to zero).
The purpose of this macro is to help the programmer find bugs in his program.
The message "assertion failed in file foo.c, function do_bar(), line
1287" is of no help at all to a user.
RETURN VALUE¶
No value is returned.
POSIX.1-2001, C89, C99. In C89,
expression is required to be of type
int and undefined behavior results if it is not, but in C99 it may have
any scalar type.
BUGS¶
assert() is implemented as a macro; if the expression tested has
side-effects, program behavior will be different depending on whether
NDEBUG is defined. This may create Heisenbugs which go away when
debugging is turned on.
SEE ALSO¶
abort(3),
assert_perror(3),
exit(3)
COLOPHON¶
This page is part of release 3.44 of the Linux
man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
