PR java/16927 [Was Re: PATCH for better assertion control.]

[Tom Tromey]

Andrew> Indeed.  However, I'm pretty sure that patch_string does do the right
Andrew> thing, and that calling it at this point solves the problem.  But the
Andrew> whole approach of patching tree nodes is fraught with problems.

In the particular case of assert, I see the problem as being that the
front end is generating trees for both analysis and code generation,
so we wind up making "tricky" decisions like this in order to get the
same structure past both of those passes.  It would probably be
cleaner to just introduce a new ASSERT_STMT tree for analysis, then
lower that to something else (perhaps a nop if we aren't generating
asserts) after analysis and before code generation.

Tom