Loop Runs At Most Once

ID

java.loop_runs_at_most_once

Severity

high

Remediation Complexity

medium

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

medium

Resource

Reliability

Language

Java

Tags

control-flow, loop, reliability

Description

Reports a for, while or do-while loop whose body ends in an unconditional break, return or throw: a jump that always runs, so the loop can never reach a second iteration. Only the loop’s last direct statement is examined — a jump inside an if, a switch, a try, or a nested loop is conditional by construction and is not reported. A continue anywhere in the body that targets the loop, guarded or not, suppresses the report: it is direct evidence the loop was written to run more than once.

Rationale

A loop that cannot iterate reads as if it does, and is equivalent to a plain if. The usual cause is a jump statement written one level too high — meant to sit inside a condition, but placed directly in the loop body instead, so it fires on every entry rather than some of them.

int attempt = 0;
while (attempt < maxAttempts) {
  processNextItem(queue);
  attempt++;
  break;   // always runs -- the loop body executes exactly once
}

Remediation

Move the jump inside the condition that was meant to guard it, or drop it if the loop was only ever meant to run once and an if says that more clearly.

int attempt = 0;
while (attempt < maxAttempts) {
  processNextItem(queue);
  attempt++;
}

References

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