Features

Avoiding Assert Statements with Constant Conditions

Though assert statements are very useful when it comes to checking runtime assumptions, using them to verify conditions that are constant is not so wise. Assert conditions that always evaluate to true are particularly unnecessary because they will never throw an error and can only serve to use up the CPU resources.<br/
Here is an example from com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKDefaultEngine:

Assert condition true is a constant

IntelliJ IDEA 9 will bring you the assert statement condition is constant inspection, which will detect such assert statements, except for boolean literal false, because it is often used in code which is known or supposed to be unreachable.

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