Is Java assert broken?

Question

While poking around the questions, I recently discovered the assert keyword in Java. At first, I was excited. Something useful I didn\'t already know! A more

Answer 1

This doesn't directly answer your question about assert, but I'd recommend checking out the Preconditions class in guava/google-collections. It allows you to write nice stuff like this (using static imports):

// throw NPE if listOfStuff is null
this.listOfStuff = checkNotNull(listOfStuff);

// same, but the NPE will have "listOfStuff" as its message
this.listOfStuff = checkNotNull(listOfStuff, "listOfStuff"); 

It seems like something like this might be what you want (and it can't be turned off).