Software Architect's Handbook

Unreachable code

Unreachable code is code that can never be executed, regardless of the conditions at runtime. There is simply no control flow path that will lead to the code being executed. Code can become unreachable for a variety of reasons. Some examples include developers forgetting to delete obsolete code, code that was intentionally made unreachable so that it could potentially be used later, code strictly for debugging/test purposes that was not removed, modifications to other code that unknowingly made code unreachable, business logic/data changes that made code unreachable, and a programming error.

Static analysis tools can help you to find this type of code. If the unreachable code is the result of a bug and it is determined after ...