Same Implementation Conditional

csharp.same_implementation_conditional

Severity

low

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Reliability

Language

CSharp

Description

Reports an if / else whose then and else bodies are textually identical. When both branches do the same thing, the condition contributes nothing and the code most often reflects an unfinished edit or a copy-paste mistake.

Rationale

A pattern of the form if (cond) { X; } else { X; } collapses to just X;. The condition is misleading: a future maintainer reading the code expects the branches to differ. Either one of the branches was meant to behave differently and the change was forgotten, or the duplication should be removed.

if (force)                              // FLAW — both branches do the same thing
{
    Refresh();
}
else
{
    Refresh();
}

if (force)                              // OK — distinct branches
{
    HardRefresh();
}
else
{
    Refresh();
}

Remediation

Decide what each branch is supposed to do. If they were genuinely meant to differ, fix the diverging branch; otherwise remove the if altogether and keep a single statement.

References

C# selection statements