I encountered a situation where a non-void method is missing a return statement and the code still compiles.
I know that the statements after the while loop are unreachable (dead code) and would never be executed. But why doesn’t the compiler even warn about returning something? Or why would a language allow us to have a non-void method having an infinite loop and not returning anything?
public int doNotReturnAnything() {
while(true) {
//do something
}
//no return statement
}
If I add a break statement (even a conditional one) in the while loop, the compiler complains of the infamous errors: Method does not return a value
in Eclipse and Not all code paths return a value
in Visual Studio.
public int doNotReturnAnything() {
while(true) {
if(mustReturn) break;
//do something
}
//no return statement
}
This is true of both Java and C#.