Return statement assigns local variable¶
ID: js/useless-assignment-in-return
Kind: problem
Security severity:
Severity: warning
Precision: very-high
Tags:
- maintainability
- readability
- external/cwe/cwe-563
Query suites:
- javascript-security-and-quality.qls
Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository
Assigning a local variable in a return statement is useless, since the local variable will go out of scope immediately and its new value is lost.
Recommendation¶
Closely examine the code in question to understand the original intention. For instance, the assignment may originally have referred to a variable from another scope that accidentally was shadowed due to a renaming; in this case, perform another renaming to make it visible again. Or maybe the assignment was meant to assign to a property of the receiver object and the programmer inadvertently forgot to qualify it by this; address this by providing the required qualification. Finally, the assignment may simply be unnecessary, in which case it can be removed.
Example¶
In the following example, the getName method of Person contains a useless assignment to name.
function Person(first, last, age) {
this.first = first;
this.last = last;
this.age = age;
}
Person.prototype.getName = function() {
var name = first + " " + last;
return name = name.trim();
};
The assignment serves no obvious purpose and should be removed:
function Person(first, last, age) {
this.first = first;
this.last = last;
this.age = age;
}
Person.prototype.getName = function() {
var name = first + " " + last;
return name.trim();
};
References¶
Wikipedia: Dead store.
Common Weakness Enumeration: CWE-563.