org.sonar.plugins.csharp.S3346.html Maven / Gradle / Ivy
Why is this an issue?
An assertion is a piece of code that’s used during development when the compilation debug mode is activated. It
allows a program to check itself as it runs. When an assertion is true, that means everything is operating as expected.
In non-debug mode, all Debug.Assert calls
are automatically left out (via the Conditional("DEBUG") mechanism). So, by
contract, the boolean expressions that are evaluated by those assertions must not contain any side effects. Otherwise, when leaving the debug mode, the functional behavior
of the application is not the same anymore.
The rule will raise if the method name starts with any of the following remove, delete, add,
pop, update, retain, insert, push, append, clear,
dequeue, enqueue, dispose, put, or set, although SetEquals will be
ignored.
How to fix it
In the following example, the assertion checks the return value of the remove method in the argument. Because the whole line is skipped in
non-debug builds, the call to Remove never happens in such builds.
Code examples
Noncompliant code example
Debug.Assert(list.Remove("dog"));
Compliant solution
The Remove call must be extracted and the return value needs to be asserted instead.
bool result = list.Remove("dog");
Debug.Assert(result);
Resources
Documentation
- Microsoft Learn
Debug.Assert Method
- Microsoft Learn Debugging, tracing, and profiling
- Microsoft Learn How to: Compile
Conditionally with Trace and Debug
- Microsoft Learn Miscellaneous attributes
interpreted by the C# compiler -
Conditional attribute
Articles & blog posts
- Wikipedia Side effect (computer science)