Our website uses cookies to enhance your browsing experience.
Accept
to the top
close form

Fill out the form in 2 simple steps below:

Your contact information:

Step 1
Congratulations! This is your promo code!

Desired license type:

Step 2
Team license
Enterprise license
** By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement
close form
Request our prices
New License
License Renewal
--Select currency--
USD
EUR
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
Free PVS‑Studio license for Microsoft MVP specialists
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
To get the licence for your open-source project, please fill out this form
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
I am interested to try it on the platforms:
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
check circle
Message submitted.

Your message has been sent. We will email you at


If you haven't received our response, please do the following:
check your Spam/Junk folder and click the "Not Spam" button for our message.
This way, you won't miss messages from our team in the future.

>
>
>
V3156. The argument of the method is no…
menu mobile close menu
Analyzer diagnostics
General Analysis (C++)
General Analysis (C#)
General Analysis (Java)
Micro-Optimizations (C++)
Diagnosis of 64-bit errors (Viva64, C++)
Customer specific requests (C++)
MISRA errors
AUTOSAR errors
OWASP errors (C#)
Problems related to code analyzer
Additional information
toggle menu Contents

V3156. The argument of the method is not expected to be null.

Aug 26 2020

The analyzer has detected a possible issue, where the value 'null' is passed as an argument to a method that is not supposed to get the value 'null' for this argument.

This may result in, for example, throwing an exception or incorrectly executing the method.

When coding, it might be difficult to make sure you have null checks in all sensitive spots. Such a check is especially important when a variable that can take the value 'null' is passed to a method where it is further used as an argument to another method that does not expect the value 'null' for this argument.

Consider the following contrived example:

void Method(string[] args)
{
  var format = args.Length != 0 ? args[0] : null;
  ....
  var message = string.Format(format, _value);
  // do something
}

If the 'args' array is empty, the 'format' variable will be assigned the value 'null'. Consequently, that same value will be passed to the 'string.Format' method as its first argument, resulting in throwing an exception. This code can be fixed as follows:

void Method(string[] args)
{
  var format = args.Length != 0 ? args[0] : null;
  ....
  if (format == null)
  {
    // process an error
    return;
  }

  var message = string.Format(format, _value);
  // do something
}

Let's make the example above a bit more complex:

void Method(string[] args)
{
  var format = args.Length != 0 ? args[0] : null;
  ....
  WriteInfo(format);
}

void WriteInfo(string format)
{
  Console.Write(format, _value);
}

The 'format' variable still depends on 'args.Length' and could potentially be assigned the value 'null'. In this case, we assume that 'format == null'. Therefore, it is also the value 'null' that will be passed to the 'WriteInfo' method. This value will then be passed to the 'Console.WriteLine' method as its first argument, resulting in an 'ArgumentNullException'.

This snippet is fixed in the same way as the previous one:

void Method(string[] args)
{
  var format = args.Length != 0 ? args[0] : null;
  ....
  WriteInfo(format);
}

void WriteInfo(string format)
{
  if (format == null)
  {  
    // process an error
    return;
  }
  Console.Write(format, _value);
}

The next example is taken from a real program:

private static string HandleSuffixValue(object val, StringSegment suffixSegment)
{
  ....
  var res = string.Format(suffixSegment.Value, val).TrimEnd(']');
  return res == "" ? null : res;
}

The first argument of the 'string.Format' method must not be 'null'. Let's see what 'suffixSegment.Value' returns:

public string Value
{
  get
  {
    if (HasValue)
    {
      return Buffer.Substring(Offset, Length);
    }
    else
    {
      return null;
    }
  }
}

If 'HasValue' is 'false', then 'Value' will return 'null'. It means the call of the 'string.Format' method could potentially throw an exception in this case. This is how it can be fixed:

private static string HandleSuffixValue(object val, StringSegment suffixSegment)
{
  ....
  if (suffixSegment.Value == null)
  {
    return null;
  }

  var res = string.Format(suffixSegment.Value, val).TrimEnd(']');
  return res == "" ? null : res;
}

This diagnostic is classified as:

You can look at examples of errors detected by the V3156 diagnostic.