Assert is broken

Question

I'm a fairly new Java programmer, coming from a C++ background. Over the past several months, I've written about 26000 lines of Java code, with heavy use of the assert statement to catch bugs and invalid data. Works great. I'm using Borland JBuilder 9, Weblogic edition.
Now that I'm trying to deploy, I've found that assert is broken. You see, in C++ land, assert is useful because it is ignored unless you are in debug mode. Ignored means the compiler ignores it, and the arguments in it aren't evaluated. Won't affect performance.
But now, when I adjust the project settings and uncheck the box that says "enable the assert keyword", I suddenly find my code full of errors: assert isn't ignored, it's just uncompilable!
Hopefully I'm missing something important here. Or is this just broken? Is there a way I can make it ignore (and not evaluate!) the contents of the assert statements? I guess in C++ it's easier, becase assert is a macro. Hmm, maybe this is the reason why it is the way it is: no macros in Java. Am I right?
--- Eric

Answer 1

assert's not broken, it's a flaw either in JBuilder or your understanding.
Why is it that when people have problems they automatically assume that they're doing everything right and the JVM is bugged? I don't get it.
I think you're the problem. Dig deeper - there's a flag in the JVM that will tell the compiler/runtime to ignore the asserts. I just don't know what it is, because I don't use assert. I find that it's always turned off at runtime. During development, I'd rather have a full set of JUnit tests than all the asserts in the world. JMO