How to enable JDK 1.4 assertions in Tomcat?

Hi,
I want to use the assert statement from JDK 1.4 in my servlets in Tomcat 4.1.24 (Win). I know I have to enable it by a command line parameter -ea. But how do I tell this my Tomcat server?
I tried to set the CATALINA_OPTS shell variable
(CATALINA_OPTS="-ea") but it didn't work.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Tom

in 'setclasspath.bat' you need to insert this line:
Rene

The potential problem with this: If your servlet throws an assertion error, is the container designed to handle it? I think not, because assertions aren't meant to be handled by code (even though they can be).

So... umm.... won't that cause the current thread to die with an assertion error? How would the container notify the browser that something had gone wrong? Would it perhaps kill the container?

I'd be interested to hear your results...

Also... moving this from Servlets -> Apache/Tomcat