Why does Java have an "unreachable statement" compiler error?

Question

I often find when debugging a program it is convenient, (although arguably bad practice) to insert a return statement inside a block of code. I might try something like this in Java ....

class Test {
        public static void main(String args[]) {
                System.out.println("hello world");
                return;
                System.out.println("i think this line might cause a problem");
        }
}

of course, this would yield the compiler error.

Test.java:7: unreachable statement

I could understand why a warning might be justified as having unused code is bad practice. But I don't understand why this needs to generate an error.

Is this just Java trying to be a Nanny, or is there a good reason to make this a compiler error?

Answer 1

Because unreachable code is meaningless to the compiler. Whilst making code meaningful to people is both paramount and harder than making it meaningful to a compiler, the compiler is the essential consumer of code. The designers of Java take the viewpoint that code that is not meaningful to the compiler is an error. Their stance is that if you have some unreachable code, you have made a mistake that needs to be fixed.

There is a similar question here: Unreachable code: error or warning?, in which the author says "Personally I strongly feel it should be an error: if the programmer writes a piece of code, it should always be with the intention of actually running it in some scenario." Obviously the language designers of Java agree.

Whether unreachable code should prevent compilation is a question on which there will never be consensus. But this is why the Java designers did it.

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A number of people in comments point out that there are many classes of unreachable code Java doesn't prevent compiling. If I understand the consequences of Gödel correctly, no compiler can possibly catch all classes of unreachable code.

Unit tests cannot catch every single bug. We don't use this as an argument against their value. Likewise a compiler can't catch all problematic code, but it is still valuable for it to prevent compilation of bad code when it can.

The Java language designers consider unreachable code an error. So preventing it compiling when possible is reasonable.

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(Before you downvote: the question is not whether or not Java should have an unreachable statement compiler error. The question is why Java has an unreachable statement compiler error. Don't downvote me just because you think Java made the wrong design decision.)