[Bug gas/30860] Possible usage of NULL in GAS

[jacob at jacob dot remcomp.fr]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30860

--- Comment #3 from jacob at jacob dot remcomp.fr ---
> 
> Actually this is wrong.  The point of compiling with NDEBUG active
> is that sanity checks like the one above are removed making the code
> (theoretically) faster.  Anyone using programs compiled with NDEBUG
> must take on the risk that the program will fail in an unhelpful way
> if the input is not as expected.
> 
> So replacing know() with gas_assert() will remove the benefit of
> compiling with NDEBUG.  Of course this leads to the question - why 
> have a gas_assert() function at all, why not just use know() all 
> the time ?  The answer is partially programmer preference and
> partially assumption of risk.  If the programmer is sure that a 
> failing a particular test can only happen if something else is wrong
> elsewhere in the code, eg a rs_org fragment not being followed by
> another fragment, then using know() makes sense.  If the test fails
> then there is a bug elsewhere and this code is not at fault.  So it
> should be safe to remove the test when compiling with NDEBUG - using
> NDEBUG implies that the user is happy with the code's behaviour and
> does not want extra tests.
> 
> If on the other hand, the programmer knows that an issue can arise
> because of input over which the code has no control - eg the assembler
> source input file - and there is no easy way to report this error back
> to the user, then using gas_assert() makes sense.  The code cannot
> continue and cannot go back, so halting with an error message is the
> only option.
> 
> Having said all of that, there probably are places in the current code 
> where it would be better to use gas_assert() instead of know() and 
> places where it would be better to report an error back to the function 
> caller rather than halting.  It is just that, in my opinion, write.c:3014
> is not one of them.
> 

Hi Nick

Look, I do not share your views but I understand them. 

It is such a matter of programming philosophy that I agree that you can leave
that as it is now. It is not a serious problem.

Thanks for your work in binutils gas.

Jacob

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