Add custom messages in assert?

Question

A hack I've seen around is to use the && operator. Since a pointer "is true" if it's non-null, you can do the following without altering the condition:

assert(a == b && "A is not equal to B");

Since assert shows the condition that failed, it will display your message too. If it's not enough, you can write your own myAssert function or macro that will display whatever you want.

Another option is to reverse the operands and use the comma operator. You need extra parentheses so the comma isn't treated as a delimiter between the arguments:

assert(("A must be equal to B", a == b));

(this was copied from above comments, for better visibility)

Here's my version of assert macro, which accepts the message and prints everything out in a clear way:

#include <iostream>

#ifndef NDEBUG
#   define M_Assert(Expr, Msg) \
    __M_Assert(#Expr, Expr, __FILE__, __LINE__, Msg)
#else
#   define M_Assert(Expr, Msg) ;
#endif

void __M_Assert(const char* expr_str, bool expr, const char* file, int line, const char* msg)
{
    if (!expr)
    {
        std::cerr << "Assert failed:\t" << msg << "\n"
            << "Expected:\t" << expr_str << "\n"
            << "Source:\t\t" << file << ", line " << line << "\n";
        abort();
    }
}

Now, you can use this

M_Assert(ptr != nullptr, "MyFunction: requires non-null argument");

And in case of failure you will get a message like this:

Assert failed:  MyFunction: requires non-null argument

Expected: ptr != nullptr

Source: C:\MyProject\src.cpp, line 22

Nice and clean, feel free to use it in your code =)

BOOST_ASSERT_MSG(expre, msg)

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_51_0/libs/utility/assert.html

You could either use that directly or copy Boost's code. Also note Boost assert is header only, so you could just grab that single file if you didn't want to install all of Boost.

As zneak's answer convolutes the code somewhat, a better approach is to merely comment the string text you're talking about. ie.:

assert(a == b); // A must be equal to B

Since the reader of the assert error will look up the file and line anyway from the error message, they will see the full explanation here.

Because, at the end of the day, this:

assert(number_of_frames != 0); // Has frames to update

reads better than this:

assert(number_of_frames != 0 && "Has frames to update");

in terms of human parsing of code ie. readability. Also not a language hack.