Bistro Assertions

Sun added support for assertions to Java with JDK v1.4. Because the v1.4 runtime introduced the ability the enable and disable assertions at various levels of granularity, the Bistro compiler was enhanced to translate two message idioms into primitive assertions.

aBoolean assert.
aBoolean assert: [ failureMessage ].

The Bistro compiler translates the first idiom into a simple assert and the second idiom into an extended assert.

assert primitive.booleanFrom( aBoolean );
assert primitive.booleanFrom( aBoolean ) : (failureMessage);

To utilize these enhancements, the Bistro compiler always invokes the Java compiler with the -source 1.4 option.

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Copyright 1999-2002 Nikolas S. Boyd.