P46 title: The Design by Contract Pattern author's name: Michel de Champlain email address: michel@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz postal address: University of Canterbury Department of Computer Science, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand phone number: 64 03 364 2987 x 7727 Abstract This paper describes the Contract pattern, an idiom that lets you apply assertions to guarantee
-conditions and post-conditions 
of methods and invariants on the state of objects. This pattern can 
be used to develop reliable classes by making the Design by Contract
methodology---introduced by Meyer in the specific context of the Eiffel 
language---available in Java and possibly other object-oriented languages.

Keywords: Design by contract