CodeQL documentation
CodeQL resources

Useless assignment to local variable

ID: go/useless-assignment-to-local
Kind: problem
Security severity: 
Severity: warning
Precision: very-high
Tags:
   - maintainability
   - external/cwe/cwe-563
Query suites:
   - go-security-and-quality.qls

Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository

A value is assigned to a variable, but either it is never read, or its value is always overwritten before being read. This means that the original assignment has no effect, and could indicate a logic error or incomplete code.

Recommendation

Remove assignments to variables that are immediately overwritten, or use the blank identifier _ as a placeholder for return values that are never used.

Example

In the following example, a value is assigned to a, but then immediately overwritten, a value is assigned to b and never used, and finally, the results of a call to fmt.Println are assigned to two temporary variables, which are then immediately overwritten by a call to function.

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
	a := calculateValue()
	a = 2

	b := calculateValue()

	ignore, ignore1 := fmt.Println(a)

	ignore, ignore1, err := function()
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}

	fmt.Println(a)
}

The result of calculateValue is never used, and if calculateValue is a side-effect free function, those assignments can be removed. To ignore all the return values of fmt.Println, you can simply not assign it to any variables. To ignore only certain return values, use _.

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
	a := 2

	fmt.Println(a)

	_, _, err := function()
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}

	fmt.Println(a)
}

References

  • © GitHub, Inc.
  • Terms
  • Privacy