Thursday, July 3, 2014

Assertions in Swift Langauge

Optionals enable you to check for values that may or may not exist, and to write code that copes gracefully with the absence of a value. In some cases, however, it is simply not possible for your code to continue execution if a value does not exist, or if a provided value does not satisfy certain conditions. In these situations, you can trigger an assertion in your code to end code execution and to provide an opportunity to debug the cause of the absent or invalid value.

Debugging with Assertions

An assertion is a runtime check that a logical condition definitely evaluates to true. Literally put, an assertion “asserts” that a condition is true. You use an assertion to make sure that an essential condition is satisfied before executing any further code. If the condition evaluates to true, code execution continues as usual; if the condition evaluates to false, code execution ends, and your app is terminated. If your code triggers an assertion while running in a debug environment, such as when
you build and run an app in Xcode, you can see exactly where the invalid state occurred and query the state of your app at the time that the assertion was triggered. An assertion also lets you provide a suitable debug message as to the nature of the assert. You write an assertion by calling the global assert function. You pass the assert function an expression that evaluates to true or false and a message that should be displayed if the result of the condition is false:

let age = -3
assert(age >= 0, "A person's age cannot be less than zero")
// this causes the assertion to trigger, because age is not >= 0

In this example, code execution will continue only if age >= 0 evaluates to true, that is, if the value of age is non-negative. If the value of age is negative, as in the code above, then age >= 0 evaluates to false, and the assertion is triggered, terminating the application. Assertion messages cannot use string interpolation. The assertion message can be omitted if desired, as in the following example:

assert(age >= 0)

When to Use Assertions

Use an assertion whenever a condition has the potential to be false, but must definitely be true in order for your code to continue execution. Suitable scenarios for an assertion check include:

NOTE

 Assertions cause your app to terminate and are not a substitute for designing your code in such a way that An integer subscript index is passed to a custom subscript implementation, but the subscript index value could be too low or too high. A value is passed to a function, but an invalid value means that the function cannot fulfill its task. An optional value is currently nil, but a non-nil value is essential for subsequent code to execute successfully.
invalid conditions are unlikely to arise. Nonetheless, in situations where invalid conditions are possible, an assertion is an effective way to ensure that such conditions are highlighted and noticed during development, before your app is published.

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