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 do not see the email in your inbox, please check if it is filtered to one of the following folders:

  • Promotion
  • Updates
  • Spam

Webinar: C++ semantics - 06.11

>
>
>
V3162. Suspicious return of an always e…
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

V3162. Suspicious return of an always empty collection.

Sep 30 2020

The analyzer has detected a 'return' statement that always returns an empty collection declared as a local variable. This typically happens when the programmer forgets to add elements to the collection.

Consider the following example:

List<string> CreateDataList()
{
  List<string> list = new List<string>();
  string data = DoSomething();
  return list;
}

The programmer forgot to add the 'data' element to 'list', so the method will always return an empty collection. Here is the fixed version:

List<string> CreateDataList()
{
  List<string> list = new List<string>();
  string data = DoSomething();
  list.Add(data);
  return list;
}

Sometimes developers will write a method that does nothing more than simply create and return a collection, for example:

List<List<CustomClass>> CreateEmptyDataList()
{
  var list = new List<List<CustomClass>>();
  return list;
}

Another example:

List<List<CustomClass>> CreateEmptyDataList()
{
  return new List<List<CustomClass>>();
}

This technique is used in certain programming patterns or when the type of the collection has a very long name. The analyzer can recognize such situations and ignore them.