I am a big fan of writing assert checks in C++ code as a way to catch cases duri

Question

I am a big fan of writing assert checks in C++ code as a way to catch cases during development that cannot possibly happen but do happen because of logic bugs in my program. This is a good practice in general.

However, I've noticed that some functions I write (which are part of a complex class) have 5+ asserts which feels like it could potentially be a bad programming practice, in terms of readability and maintainability. I think it's still great, as each one requires me to think about pre- and post-conditions of functions and they really do help catch bugs. However, I just wanted to put this out there to ask if there is a better paradigms for catching logic errors in cases when a large number of checks is necessary.

Emacs comment: Since Emacs is my IDE of choice, I have it slightly gray out the assert statements which helps reduce the feeling of clutter that they can provide. Here's what I add to my .emacs file:

; gray out the "assert(...)" wrapper
(add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook
(lambda () (font-lock-add-keywords nil
    '(("\<\(assert(.*);\)" 1 '(:foreground "#444444") t)))))

; gray out the stuff inside parenthesis with a slightly lighter color
(add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook
(lambda () (font-lock-add-keywords nil
    '(("\<assert\((.*);\)" 1 '(:foreground "#666666") t)))))

Explanation / Answer

I've seen hundreds of bugs that would have been solved faster if someone had written more asserts, and not a single one that would have been solved quicker by writing fewer.

[C]ould [too many asserts] potentially be a bad programming practice, in terms of readability and maintainability[?]

Readability could be a problem, perhaps - although it's been my experience that people who write good asserts also write readable code. And it never bothers me to see the beginning of a function start with a block of asserts to verify that the arguments aren't garbage - just put a blank line after it.

Also in my experience, maintainability is always improved by asserts, just as it is by unit tests. Asserts provide a sanity check that code is being used the way it was intended to be used.

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