Why is this an issue?

When writing code, it is important to ensure that each statement serves a purpose and contributes to the overall functionality of the program. When they have no side effects or do not change the control flow, they can either indicate a programming error or be redundant:

  1. The code does not behave as intended: The statements are expected to have an effect but they do not. This can be caused by mistyping, copy-and-paste errors, etc.
  2. The statements are residual after a refactoring.

Exceptions

The rule does not raise an issue:

Noncompliant code example

a == 1; // Noncompliant; was assignment intended?
var msg = "Hello, "
  "World!"; // Noncompliant; have we forgotten '+' operator on previous line?

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