Use ASSERT() to Catch Invalid Assumptions

Assertions are an extremely valuable form of active documentation. The syntax for ASSERT(9F) is as follows:

void ASSERT(EXPRESSION)

The ASSERT() macro halts the execution of the kernel if a condition that is expected to be true is actually false. ASSERT() provides a way for the programmer to validate the assumptions made by a piece of code.

The ASSERT() macro is defined only when the DEBUG compilation symbol is defined. When DEBUG is not defined, the ASSERT() macro has no effect.

The following example assertion tests the assumption that a particular pointer value is not NULL:

ASSERT(ptr != NULL);

If the driver has been compiled with DEBUG, and if the value of ptr is NULL at this point in execution, then the following panic message is printed to the console:

panic: assertion failed: ptr != NULL, file: driver.c, line: 56

Because ASSERT(9F) uses the DEBUG compilation symbol, any conditional debugging code should also use DEBUG.