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Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 08:25:26 +0100
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Subject: Assertions
From: krakjoe@php.net (Joe Watkins)

Morning All,

	I'd like to draw some attention to how poor assertions are in PHP.

	The current assertion API is not usable in my opinion; it has a 
considerable overhead, relies on eval(), and is generally poorly 
implemented.

	I have done some work toward implementing assert at the Zend level, 
giving assertions a more modern, usable feel to them.

	https://github.com/krakjoe/php-src/compare/assert

	This implementation of assert removes the old implementation and 
associated functions and INI settings, and replaces it with a single INI 
setting to control assertion compilation.

	Failed assertions throw an AssertionException (which extends 
ErrorException with a severity of E_ERROR), setting the message of the 
exception to the expression asserted.

	The syntax of assertion is the same as [all] other languages:

	T_ASSERT expr ';'

	This means that assert("some code here") will pass assertion causing no 
error, because strings are no longer treated as code, because eval is 
evil();

	Setting zend.assertions=0 system configuration setting will stop 
ZEND_ASSRT compilation.

	So, we have:
	
	try {
		assert (PHP != JUNK);
		
		
	} catch(AssertionException $ex) {
		printf("Assertion failed: %s\n", $ex->getMessage());
		printf("Something is horribly wrong ...\n");
	}

	Better, no ??

Cheers
Joe