assert(false) vs abort()

Greetings!

I have a piece of code like this:

  int frobnicate(short foo) {
    switch(foo) {
      case bar: return 0;
      case baz: return 1;
      default: assert(false);
    }
  }

Now, when I compile this, the compiler complains that not every path returns
a value. Thinking about it, it even makes sense because the 'false' is only
evaluated at runtime so the compiler can't know that this will terminate
the program.

Okay, I thought, then I'll replace this with a simple abort() call. However,
there are two things that annoy me there:
1. The call isn't removed with NDEBUG. True, the impact on executable size
and speed is probably around zero, but somehow I'd like to avoid a function
call there that won't (/me crosses fingers) be called anyway because that
would be a bug and only makes it harder for the optimiser to do its work.
2. I don't get the same diagnostic support as assert() gets, like having the
file/line/function dumped to stderr and a debugger waiting for me there to
inspect the situation.

How do you deal with this situation?

Uli

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