When should I use Debug.Assert()?

Question

I\'ve been a professional software engineer for about a year now, having graduated with a CS degree. I\'ve known about assertions for a while in C++ and C, but had no idea t

Answer 1

If you want Asserts in your production code (i.e. Release builds), you can use Trace.Assert instead of Debug.Assert.

This of course adds overhead to your production executable.

Also if your application is running in user-interface mode, the Assertion dialog will be displayed by default, which may be a bit disconcerting for your users.

You can override this behaviour by removing the DefaultTraceListener: look at the documentation for Trace.Listeners in MSDN.

In summary,

• Use Debug.Assert liberally to help catch bugs in Debug builds.

• If you use Trace.Assert in user-interface mode, you probably want to remove the DefaultTraceListener to avoid disconcerting users.

• If the condition you're testing is something your app can't handle, you're probably better off throwing an exception, to ensure execution doesn't continue. Be aware that a user can choose to ignore an assertion.