Boolean Compare With Literal

ID

go.boolean_compare_with_literal

Severity

info

Remediation Complexity

medium

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

medium

Resource

Code Smell

Language

Go

Tags

code-style, suspicious-comparison

Description

Reports uses of == or != to compare a value against the boolean literals true or false. Such comparisons are redundant: a boolean expression can be used directly or negated.

Rationale

if flag == true is just a wordier if flag, and if flag == false is if !flag. The extra comparison adds noise without changing behaviour. In Go true and false are predeclared identifiers, so the redundancy reads exactly like any other identifier comparison and is easy to overlook. Using the boolean directly is shorter and clearer.

if flag == true {  // FLAW — write: if flag
}
if flag != false { // FLAW — write: if flag
}
if true == flag {  // FLAW — literal on the left
}
if flag {          // OK — used directly
}
if x == y {        // OK — not a boolean literal
}

Remediation

Use the boolean expression directly. Replace flag == true and flag != false with flag, and replace flag == false and flag != true with !flag.

References