Misleading indentation¶
ID: cs/misleading-indentation
Kind: problem
Security severity:
Severity: warning
Precision: medium
Tags:
- changeability
- correctness
- logic
Query suites:
- csharp-security-and-quality.qls
Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository
A control structure (if statements and loops) has a body that is either a block of statements or a single statement. The second option may be indicated by omitting the braces: { and }.
However, omitting the braces can lead to confusion, especially if the indentation of the code suggests that multiple statements are within the body of a control structure when in fact they are not.
Recommendation¶
It is usually considered good practice to include braces for all control structures in C#. This is because it makes it easier to maintain the code later. For example, it’s easy to see at a glance which part of the code is in the scope of an if statement, and adding more statements to the body of the if statement is less error-prone.
You should also ensure that the indentation of the code is consistent with the actual flow of control, so that it does not confuse programmers.
Example¶
In the example below, the if statement checks whether the item i is null before adding it to the list. However the if statement does not guard the call to Console.Out.WriteLine, resulting in a NullReferenceException whenever null is passed to the function AddItem.
void AddItem(Object i)
{
if (i != null)
items.Add(i);
Console.Out.WriteLine("Item added: " + i.ToString());
}
This code is fixed by adding curly braces { and } around both statements, as shown below.
void AddItem(Object i)
{
if (i != null)
{
items.Add(i);
Console.Out.WriteLine("Item added: " + i.ToString());
}
}
References¶
MSDN Documentation: if-else (C# Reference)