c++ assertion

from usaco: usacoprobfix.htm

• Put sanity checks around all array indexing (Pascal does this by default). The assert() (from assert.h) routine is a nice tool for this. assert() fails if the parameter is 0 (false). If this happens, assert will stop the program and print out an error message saying which assert on which line failed. The really nice thing about assert is that you can #define NDEBUG for including assert.h and the assert operations go away, so that you can put a lot of debugging in and not run it when you want the code to be fast. Consider:

       int i, j, quotient;
       i = 8;
       j = 0;
       assert (j != 0);
       quotient = i/j;
  

  or

       int i, j, chessboard[8][8];
       assert (0 <= i);
       assert (0 <= j);
       assert (i < 8);
       assert (j < 8);
  

  Why four statements? Because the compound statement doesn't give you enough data when failure occurs. 

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