ASSERT and __builtin_unreachable

[Niels Möller]

I think we discussed this earlier, but I don't recall the conclusion, if
any. Would it make sense to use ASSERT to guide the compiler, and define
it like

#define ASSERT(expr) do { if (!(expr)) __builtin_unreachable(); } while (0)

(unless building with --enable-assert)?

The idea is to tell the compiler to assume that the asserted expression
is true, and not care what the behavior of the generated code is in case
it nevertheless happens to be false at run time.

As far as I understand, this should aid optimization in some (rare?)
cases. Drawbacks are small: we'd need a configure test for
__builtin_unreachable, and there are a few places with code like

   ASSERT_CODE (char *bp_orig = bp - bytes);
   ...
   ASSERT (bp > bp_orig);

that needs the current definition of ASSERT and have to be updated in
one way or the other.

Regards,
/Niels

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