Assertions at compilation time?

[Nick Widelec]

Hi everybody,
Having had a look to this topic: https://coderanch.com/t/419627/vc/Enable-assertion-complie-time I see that it's possible to enable assertions at compilation time.
I am using Java 7 on ubuntu 12.04 and I cannot do that. i.e. I get "-ea invalid flag".
What am I doing wrong? and moreover why would be useful at all enabling assertions at compilation time?
Thanks in advance.

[Mikalai Zaikin]

Nick Widelec wrote:
I am using Java 7 on ubuntu 12.04 and I cannot do that. i.e. I get "-ea invalid flag".
What am I doing wrong? and moreover why would be useful at all enabling assertions at compilation time?
Thanks in advance.

Hi,

Assertions can be enable/disabled at run time, not at compile time. The compiler complains correctly in your case...

So, instead of

javac -ea:xxx ...

you should use:

java -ea:xxx ...

Please, refer this article for details.

Best regards,
MZ

[Nick Widelec]

Mikalai Zaikin wrote:

Nick Widelec wrote:
I am using Java 7 on ubuntu 12.04 and I cannot do that. i.e. I get "-ea invalid flag".
What am I doing wrong? and moreover why would be useful at all enabling assertions at compilation time?
Thanks in advance.

Hi,

Assertions can be enable/disabled at run time, not at compile time. The compiler complains correctly in your case...

So, instead of

javac -ea:xxx ...

you should use:

java -ea:xxx ...

Please, refer this article for details.

Best regards,
MZ

Hi thanks for responding,
What about the link I posted in my original post?

[Mikalai Zaikin]

There is no such thins as "enabling/disabling assertions at compile time".

You may be confused by how compilers treat the "assert" word at compile time.

With Java SE 1.3 and earlier, the word "assert" is not reserved one, i.e. can be used as variable name.

With Java SE 1.4 and later (including Java SE 7) the word "assert" is reserved one, and *always* will be used for assertions.

So, if you need to compile Java source code which contains variable names with "assert" in Java SE 7, you need to tell compiler to treat source code as old one, and you can do it with the "-source" argument:

javac -source 1.3 XXXXXX

But this is not "disabling assertions" activity, this is "informing compiler to treat assert as valid variable name" activity.

HTH,
MZ