What is the role of asserts in C++ programs that have unit tests?
- by lhumongous
Greetings,
I've been adding unit tests to some legacy C++ code, and I've run into many scenarios where an assert inside a function will get tripped during a unit test run. A common idiom that I've run across is functions that take pointer arguments and immediately assert if the argument is NULL.
I could easily get around this by disabling asserts when I'm unit testing. But I'm starting to wonder if unit tests are supposed to alleviate the need for runtime asserts. Is this a correct assessment? Are unit tests supposed to replace runtime asserts by happening sooner in the pipeline (ie: the error is caught in a failing test instead of when the program is running).
On the other hand, I don't like adding soft fails to code (eg: if(param == NULL) return false;). A runtime assert at least makes it easier to debug a problem in case a unit test missed a bug.
Thanks!
