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Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2021 10:50:36 +0200
Message-ID: <CAJpLVh2gJV7LcJUJaAQ6F4LOnbJVBKSzS0rT1B_Xc_xNgbkvSw@mail.gmail.com>
To: Arnold Daniels <arnold.adaniels.nl@gmail.com>
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Why is assert limited to a debugging feature only?
From: olleharstedt@gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Olle_H=C3=A4rstedt?=)

2021-04-01 10:24 GMT+02:00, Arnold Daniels <arnold.adaniels.nl@gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> The documentation of `assert`
> ([https://php.net/assert)](https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.assert.php))
> states that's debugging only. This is further enforced by php.ini flags to
> disable assertions in production.
>
> Why are the use cases of this feature being limited to debugging? We can see
> from the popularity of user-space assertion libraries, like
> [webmozart/asset](https://packagist.org/packages/webmozart/assert) and
> [beberlei/assert](https://packagist.org/packages/beberlei/assert), that
> there is a need for runtime assertions.
>
> [Arnold Daniels - Chat @
> Spike](https://spikenow.com/r/a/?ref=spike-organic-signature&_ts=yux2k)	[yux2k]

Dunno about the motivation of the implementors, but usually assertions
are used for internal invariants and mental checks while exceptions
should be used for interaction with the outside world (database
errors, user input errors etc). If you follow this, an assert error
will never be useful for a user, it will always be an "internal
error", and that's why it can (should?) be disabled in production.

Olle