Dealing with side effects

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Hi,

 

first of all, let me stress how impressed I am about FindBugs: Together with runtime assertions and unit tests, this tool definitely helps to deliver high quality software - congratulations!

 

I am very comfortable with runtime assertions and unit tests, but am new to static analysis, so I tried to find out how I can mix these technologies to get bullet-proof software. In particular, I run FindBugs over the following simple test:

import edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.*;

abstract class Test implements Runnable {
    
    @CheckForNull
    Integer number = 1;

    private boolean invariants() {
        assert number != null;
        return true;
    }

    public void run() {
        assert invariants();
        sideEffect();
        System.out.println(number.toString()); // correct report
        assert invariants();
        System.out.println(number.toString()); // false positive!
        invariants();
        System.out.println(number.toString()); // false positive!
    }

    abstract void sideEffect();
}

This gets me three NP_NULL_ON_SOME_PATH reports. However, only the first is relevant, the other are false positives because the test is done in a private method which can't get overridden.

 

Are there any plans to improve null pointer dereference detection to get rid of these false positives?

 

BTW: Looking at the source code I noticed that you are looking to improve the support for nested JARs. You may find my project helpful: https://truezip.dev.java.net . Version 6.5.1 has been fortified with FindBugs in addition to the already used runtime assertions and unit tests.

 

With best regards,
Christian Schlichtherle
--
Schlichtherle IT Services
Wittelsbacherstr. 10a
10707 Berlin

 

Tel: +49 (0) 30 / 34 35 29 29
Mobil: +49 (0) 173 / 27 12 470
mailto:christian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.schlichtherle.de

 

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