I'm wondering if it inlines it (and thus eliminates it).

But this would come with a performance penalty: it makes the function you assert() in no longer a leaf function (it calls assert()) and AFAIK, Go only inlines leaf functions. (So, any function in which you call assert() is no longer eligible for inlining.)

deathanatos: Go 1.12 can inline non-leaf functions, and I’d be surprised if it still fails to do the right thing here.