Cognitive Complexity

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how difficult a unit of code is to intuitively understand. Unlike Cyclomatic Complexity, which determines how difficult your code will be to test, Cognitive Complexity tells you how difficult your code will be to read and comprehend.

A method's cognitive complexity is based on a few simple rules:

• Code is not considered more complex when it uses shorthand that the language provides for collapsing multiple statements into one
• Code is considered more complex for each "break in the linear flow of the code"
• Code is considered more complex when "flow breaking structures are nested"

Further reading

• Cognitive Complexity docs
• Cognitive Complexity: A new way of measuring understandability

Cognitive Complexity

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how difficult a unit of code is to intuitively understand. Unlike Cyclomatic Complexity, which determines how difficult your code will be to test, Cognitive Complexity tells you how difficult your code will be to read and comprehend.

A method's cognitive complexity is based on a few simple rules:

• Code is not considered more complex when it uses shorthand that the language provides for collapsing multiple statements into one
• Code is considered more complex for each "break in the linear flow of the code"
• Code is considered more complex when "flow breaking structures are nested"

Further reading

• Cognitive Complexity docs
• Cognitive Complexity: A new way of measuring understandability

Checks for every useless assignment to local variable in every scope. The basic idea for this cop was from the warning of ruby -cw:

assigned but unused variable - foo

Currently this cop has advanced logic that detects unreferenced reassignments and properly handles varied cases such as branch, loop, rescue, ensure, etc.

NOTE: Given the assignment foo = 1, bar = 2, removing unused variables can lead to a syntax error, so this case is not autocorrected.

Safety:

This cop's autocorrection is unsafe because removing assignment from operator assignment can cause NameError if this assignment has been used to declare local variable. For example, replacing a ||= 1 to a || 1 may cause "undefined local variable or method `a' for main:Object (NameError)".

Example:

# bad

def some_method
  some_var = 1
  do_something
end

Example:

# good

def some_method
  some_var = 1
  do_something(some_var)
end

Checks for every useless assignment to local variable in every scope. The basic idea for this cop was from the warning of ruby -cw:

assigned but unused variable - foo

Currently this cop has advanced logic that detects unreferenced reassignments and properly handles varied cases such as branch, loop, rescue, ensure, etc.

NOTE: Given the assignment foo = 1, bar = 2, removing unused variables can lead to a syntax error, so this case is not autocorrected.

Safety:

This cop's autocorrection is unsafe because removing assignment from operator assignment can cause NameError if this assignment has been used to declare local variable. For example, replacing a ||= 1 to a || 1 may cause "undefined local variable or method `a' for main:Object (NameError)".

Example:

# bad

def some_method
  some_var = 1
  do_something
end

Example:

# good

def some_method
  some_var = 1
  do_something(some_var)
end

Checks for the use of local variable names from an outer scope in block arguments or block-local variables. This mirrors the warning given by ruby -cw prior to Ruby 2.6: "shadowing outer local variable - foo".

NOTE: Shadowing of variables in block passed to Ractor.new is allowed because Ractor should not access outer variables. eg. following style is encouraged:

```ruby
worker_id, pipe = env
Ractor.new(worker_id, pipe) do |worker_id, pipe|
end
```

Example:

# bad

def some_method
  foo = 1

  2.times do |foo| # shadowing outer `foo`
    do_something(foo)
  end
end

Example:

# good

def some_method
  foo = 1

  2.times do |bar|
    do_something(bar)
  end
end

Looks for expressions containing multiple binary operators where precedence is ambiguous due to lack of parentheses. For example, in 1 + 2 * 3, the multiplication will happen before the addition, but lexically it appears that the addition will happen first.

The cop does not consider unary operators (ie. !a or -b) or comparison operators (ie. a =~ b) because those are not ambiguous.

NOTE: Ranges are handled by Lint/AmbiguousRange.

Example:

# bad
a + b * c
a || b && c
a ** b + c

# good (different precedence)
a + (b * c)
a || (b && c)
(a ** b) + c

# good (same precedence)
a + b + c
a * b / c % d