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Comments on Why static code analyzers such as SonarQube indicate a high code complexity for switch statements?

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Why static code analyzers such as SonarQube indicate a high code complexity for switch statements?

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During a presentation of a pipeline configuration, a colleague showed a SonarQube integration and one of its reports. A warning was caused by overrunning the max value for the code complexity threshold in a function containing a fairly large switch statement.

Why are switch statements considered too complex and what to do about them?

The problematic code was similar to the one below, but containing about double of the case statements:

enum FooStasus
{
    ToBeStarted = 1,
    Starting = 2,
    OnGoing = 3,
    OnHold = 4,
    Stopped = 5
}

private static double GetWeight(FooStasus status)
{
    switch (status)
    {
        case FooStasus.ToBeStarted:
        case FooStasus.Starting: return 1.0;
        case FooStasus.OnGoing: return 2.0;
        case FooStasus.OnHold: return 0.2;
        case FooStasus.Stopped: return 0;
        default: return 0.5;
    }
}

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1 comment thread

Cyclomatic complexity = the number of execution paths (2 comments)
Cyclomatic complexity = the number of execution paths
Lundin‭ wrote almost 3 years ago

Since cyclomatic complexity is the number of possible execution paths, it is expected behavior. What one can do is to keep switches simple - if they only check an integer enum which has a contiguous sequence, the switch will get optimized well. In case of floating point or strings etc, not so much. That can be solved by letting the switch work as a LUT and returning a value based on an integer index.

Dirk Herrmann‭ wrote over 2 years ago

Well, more precisely it is the number of binary branches in the control flow plus one. Three ifs in a row correspond to 8 execution paths, but the cyclomatic complexity is just 4. The number of paths can even be infinite (in case of loops), while a loop condition will only contribute 1 to the cyclomatic complexity.