..JSR 41 has added a simple assertion facility to Java.  In the proposed final draft, assert statements have one of two forms:

assert Expr_1;
assert Expr_1:Expr_2;

Both of these forms, with and without parentheses around Expr_1 and Expr_2, are recognized by javac when the "-source 1.4" flag is used.  However, javadoc (Standard Doclet version 1.4 beta (04 Aug 2001)) only recognizes

assert(Expr)
and
assert (Expr)

independent of whether or not the "-source 1.4" flag is used.  In particular, the program

/**
 * JavaDoc for AssertTest2
 */

public class AssertTest2 {

    public static void main(String argv[]) {
	assert true;
	assert true:true;
	assert(true):true;
	assert (true):true;
	assert true:(true);
	assert(true):(true);
	assert (true):(true);
    }
}

compiles with javac -source 1.4 but javadoc generates an error for each line of input.  By commenting out all preceeding assert lines, I verified each line is rejected by itself; i.e. the 2nd and subsequent assert statements are *not* rejected because of poor "error" recovery in javadoc for the first "mistaken" line, "assert true".

Moreover, javadoc accepts the previous two-arg assert construction

assert(Expr_1, Expr_2);		// no longer valid

Concretely,

/**
 * JavaDoc for AssertTest3
 */

public class AssertTest3 {

    public static void main(String argv[]) {
	assert(true, true);
	assert (true, true);
    }

}

Is parsed by javadoc but rejected by javac.  This should be fixed.

Use only simple one-argument form of assert.  This is suboptimal since the two-argument from allows more information to be provided.

oops.

 xxxxx@xxxxx  2001-08-15

I read that this bug is fixed and closed, yet I fail running javadoc on 
sources with asserts. I'm using J2SKD-1.4.0-b92 (latest version).

i have the same problem i'm also using the latest version! :
((

I'll third that: same problem here with 1.4.0-b92, including
assert(true, "test") working in javadoc but not in javac. 
And yes, the workaround works.

The same experience even with JDK1.4.1beta. javadoc fails
with the following forms of assertions:

  assert expr;
  assert (expr1) : expr2;

JDK1.4.1RC still cannot handle assert statements.  Please 
unclose this log - it is NOT fixed.

Oops! My error - I didn't realize "-source 1.4" was needed as 
a javadoc parameter for source with assert statements.  
Sorry....