Python Assert Statement

What is Assertion?

Assertions are statements that assert or state a fact confidently in your program. For example, while writing a division function, you're confident the divisor shouldn't be zero, you assert divisor is not equal to zero.

Assertions are simply boolean expressions that check if the conditions return true or not. If it is true, the program does nothing and moves to the next line of code. However, if it's false, the program stops and throws an error.

It is also a debugging tool as it halts the program as soon as an error occurs and displays it.

We can be clear by looking at the flowchart below:

Python assert Statement

Python has built-in assert statement to use assertion condition in the program. assert statement has a condition or expression which is supposed to be always true. If the condition is false assert halts the program and gives an AssertionError.

Syntax for using Assert in Pyhton:

assert <condition>

assert <condition>,<error message>

In Python we can use assert statement in two ways as mentioned above.

1. assert statement has a condition and if the condition is not satisfied the program will stop and give AssertionError.
2. assert statement can also have a condition and a optional error message. If the condition is not satisfied assert stops the program and gives AssertionError along with the error message.

Let's take an example, where we have a function that will calculate the average of the values passed by the user and the value should not be an empty list. We will use assert statement to check the parameter and if the length is of the passed list is zero, the program halts.

Example 1: Using assert without Error Message

def avg(marks):
    assert len(marks) != 0
    return sum(marks)/len(marks)

mark1 = []
print("Average of mark1:",avg(mark1))

When we run the above program, the output will be:

AssertionError

We got an error as we passed an empty list mark1 to assert statement, the condition became false and assert stops the program and give AssertionError.

Now let's pass another list which will satisfy the assert condition and see what will be our output.

Example 2: Using assert with error message

def avg(marks):
    assert len(marks) != 0,"List is empty."
    return sum(marks)/len(marks)

mark2 = [55,88,78,90,79]
print("Average of mark2:",avg(mark2))

mark1 = []
print("Average of mark1:",avg(mark1))

When we run the above program, the output will be:

Average of mark2: 78.0
AssertionError: List is empty.

We passed a non-empty list mark2 and also an empty list mark1 to the avg() function and we got output for mark2 list but after that we got an error AssertionError: List is empty. The assert condition was satisfied by the mark2 list and program to continue to run. However, mark1 doesn't satisfy the condition and gives an AssertionError.

Key Points to Remember

• Assertions are the condition or boolean expression which are always supposed to be true in the code.
• assert statement takes an expression and optional message.
• assert statement is used to check types, values of argument and the output of the function.
• assert statement is used as debugging tool as it halts the program at the point where an error occurs.