Unused label¶
ID: cs/unused-label
Kind: problem
Security severity:
Severity: warning
Precision: high
Tags:
- maintainability
- useless-code
Query suites:
- csharp-security-and-quality.qls
Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository
An unused label serves no purpose and clutters the source code. It could be an indication that the code is incomplete, or that the code contains a bug where a goto statement uses the wrong label.
Recommendation¶
Ensure that all goto statements use the correct label, and remove the label if it is no longer needed.
Another solution is to rewrite the code without goto statements, which can often be much clearer.
Example¶
The following example has an unused label Error, which means that the error message is never displayed. The code can be fixed by either jumping to the correct label, or by rewriting the code without goto statements.
static void Main(string[] args)
{
using (var file = File.Open("values.xml", FileMode.Create))
using (var stream = new StreamWriter(file))
{
stream.WriteLine("<values>");
foreach (var arg in args)
{
uint value;
if (UInt32.TryParse(arg, out value))
stream.WriteLine(" <value>{0}</value>", value);
else
goto Finish; // Should be goto Error
}
goto Finish;
Error: // BAD: Unused label
Console.WriteLine("Error: All arguments must be non-negative integers");
Finish:
stream.WriteLine("</values>");
}
}
References¶
MSDN, C# Reference: goto.