Useless type test — CodeQL query help documentation

ID: cs/useless-type-test
Kind: problem
Security severity: 
Severity: warning
Precision: medium
Tags:
   - quality
   - maintainability
   - useless-code
   - external/cwe/cwe-561
Query suites:
   - csharp-security-and-quality.qls

Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository

For any type B, an instance of a type derived from B is also an instance of B. There is no need to test for this explicitly.

Recommendation¶

Remove the useless type test.

Example¶

In this example class Sub extends class Super. A new instance of Sub, sub is initialized and checked to see if it is an instance of Super . Since Sub extends Super then there is no need to test that sub is a Super because it is guaranteed to be the case.

class UselessTypeTest
{
    class Super { }
    class Sub : Super { }

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Sub sub = new Sub();
        if (sub is Super)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Surprise! sub is a Super!");
        }
    }
}