Condition Always True

ID

csharp.condition_always_true

Severity

low

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Reliability

Language

CSharp

Tags

reliability, suspicious-comparison

Description

Reports an if statement whose condition is a boolean literal — if (true) or if (false). The branch is statically decidable and the if adds no real control flow: one arm is always taken and the other is dead code.

Rationale

A literal boolean in an if is almost always a leftover from debugging or an unfinished edit. The compiler still emits the dead arm and the code obscures intent. The rule intentionally ignores while (true) and do { …​ } while (true), which are idiomatic event/processing loops.

if (true)                       // FLAW — literal condition
{
    DoSomething();
}

if (false)                      // FLAW — literal condition, dead branch
{
    NeverHappens();
}

if (count > 0)                  // OK — real condition
{
    DoSomething();
}

while (true)                    // OK — idiomatic infinite loop
{
    HandleNext();
    if (Done()) break;
}

Remediation

Replace the literal with the intended condition, or remove the if and inline the always- taken branch.

References