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Comparison of identical values

ID: java/comparison-of-identical-expressions
Kind: problem
Security severity: 
Severity: error
Precision: very-high
Tags:
   - reliability
   - correctness
   - logic
Query suites:
   - java-security-and-quality.qls

Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository

If two identical expressions are compared (that is, checked for equality or inequality), this is typically an indication of a mistake, because the Boolean value of the comparison is always the same. Often, it indicates that the wrong qualifier has been used on a field access.

An exception applies to inequality (!=) and equality (==) tests of a floating point variable with itself: the special floating point value NaN (”not-a-number”) is the only value that is not considered to be equal to itself. Thus, the test x != x where x is a float or double variable is equivalent to checking whether x is NaN, and similarly for x == x.

Recommendation

It is never good practice to compare a value with itself. If you require constant behavior, use the Boolean literals true and false, rather than encoding them obscurely as 1 == 1 or similar.

If an inequality test (using !=) of a floating point variable with itself is intentional, it should be replaced by Double.isNaN(...) or Float.isNaN(...) for readability. Similarly, if an equality test (using ==) of a floating point variable with itself is intentional, it should be replaced by !Double.isNaN(...) or !Float.isNaN(...).

Example

In the example below, the original version of Customer compares id with id, which always returns true. The corrected version of Customer includes the missing qualifier o in the comparison of id with o.id.

class Customer {
	...
	public boolean equals(Object o) {
		if (o == null) return false;
		if (Customer.class != o.getClass()) return false;
		Customer other = (Customer)o;
		if (!name.equals(o.name)) return false;
		if (id != id) return false;  // Comparison of identical values
		return true;
	}
}

class Customer {
	...
	public boolean equals(Object o) {
		if (o == null) return false;
		if (Customer.class != o.getClass()) return false;
		Customer other = (Customer)o;
		if (!name.equals(o.name)) return false;
		if (id != o.id) return false;  // Comparison corrected
		return true;
	}
}

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