Irrelevant Code
The product contains code that is not essential for execution, i.e. makes no state changes and has no side effects that alter data or control flow, such that removal of the code would have no impact to functionality or correctness.
Description
Irrelevant code could include dead code, initialization that is not used, empty blocks, code that could be entirely removed due to optimization, etc.
Demonstrations
The following examples help to illustrate the nature of this weakness and describe methods or techniques which can be used to mitigate the risk.
Note that the examples here are by no means exhaustive and any given weakness may have many subtle varieties, each of which may require different detection methods or runtime controls.
Example One
The condition for the second if statement is impossible to satisfy. It requires that the variables be non-null. However, on the only path where s can be assigned a non-null value, there is a return statement.
String s = null;
if (b) {
s = "Yes";
return;
}
if (s != null) {
Dead();
}Example Two
The following code excerpt assigns to the variable r and then overwrites the value without using it.
r = getName();
r = getNewBuffer(buf);See Also
Weaknesses in this category are related to poor coding practices.
This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.
CWE identifiers in this view (slice) are quality issues that only indirectly make it easier to introduce a vulnerability and/or make the vulnerability more difficult t...
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