<p>Seems likes it might be useful to have the assert display a message when an assertion fails.</p>

<p>Currently an <code>AssertionError</code> gets thrown, can you specify a custom message for it?</p>

<p>Can you show an example mechanism for doing this (other than creating your own exception type and throwing it)?</p>

You certainly can:
```
```
assert x > 0 : "x must be greater than zero, but x = " + x;
```
```
See
Programming with Assertions
for more information.