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 rescue blocks with no body.

Example:

# bad
def some_method
  do_something
rescue
end

# bad
begin
  do_something
rescue
end

# good
def some_method
  do_something
rescue
  handle_exception
end

# good
begin
  do_something
rescue
  handle_exception
end

Example: AllowComments: true (default)

# good
def some_method
  do_something
rescue
  # do nothing
end

# good
begin
  do_something
rescue
  # do nothing
end

Example: AllowComments: false

# bad
def some_method
  do_something
rescue
  # do nothing
end

# bad
begin
  do_something
rescue
  # do nothing
end

Example: AllowNil: true (default)

# good
def some_method
  do_something
rescue
  nil
end

# good
begin
  do_something
rescue
  # do nothing
end

# good
do_something rescue nil

Example: AllowNil: false

# bad
def some_method
  do_something
rescue
  nil
end

# bad
begin
  do_something
rescue
  nil
end

# bad
do_something rescue nil

Checks for non-atomic file operation. And then replace it with a nearly equivalent and atomic method.

These can cause problems that are difficult to reproduce, especially in cases of frequent file operations in parallel, such as test runs with parallel_rspec.

For examples: creating a directory if there is none, has the following problems

An exception occurs when the directory didn't exist at the time of exist?, but someone else created it before mkdir was executed.

Subsequent processes are executed without the directory that should be there when the directory existed at the time of exist?, but someone else deleted it shortly afterwards.

Safety:

This cop is unsafe, because autocorrection change to atomic processing. The atomic processing of the replacement destination is not guaranteed to be strictly equivalent to that before the replacement.

Example:

# bad - race condition with another process may result in an error in `mkdir`
unless Dir.exist?(path)
  FileUtils.mkdir(path)
end

# good - atomic and idempotent creation
FileUtils.mkdir_p(path)

# bad - race condition with another process may result in an error in `remove`
if File.exist?(path)
  FileUtils.remove(path)
end

# good - atomic and idempotent removal
FileUtils.rm_f(path)

Checks for non-atomic file operation. And then replace it with a nearly equivalent and atomic method.

These can cause problems that are difficult to reproduce, especially in cases of frequent file operations in parallel, such as test runs with parallel_rspec.

For examples: creating a directory if there is none, has the following problems

An exception occurs when the directory didn't exist at the time of exist?, but someone else created it before mkdir was executed.

Subsequent processes are executed without the directory that should be there when the directory existed at the time of exist?, but someone else deleted it shortly afterwards.

Safety:

This cop is unsafe, because autocorrection change to atomic processing. The atomic processing of the replacement destination is not guaranteed to be strictly equivalent to that before the replacement.

Example:

# bad - race condition with another process may result in an error in `mkdir`
unless Dir.exist?(path)
  FileUtils.mkdir(path)
end

# good - atomic and idempotent creation
FileUtils.mkdir_p(path)

# bad - race condition with another process may result in an error in `remove`
if File.exist?(path)
  FileUtils.remove(path)
end

# good - atomic and idempotent removal
FileUtils.rm_f(path)

Checks for the use of YAML class methods which have potential security issues leading to remote code execution when loading from an untrusted source.

NOTE: Ruby 3.1+ (Psych 4) uses Psych.load as Psych.safe_load by default.

Safety:

The behavior of the code might change depending on what was in the YAML payload, since YAML.safe_load is more restrictive.

Example:

# bad
YAML.load("--- !ruby/object:Foo {}") # Psych 3 is unsafe by default

# good
YAML.safe_load("--- !ruby/object:Foo {}", [Foo])                    # Ruby 2.5  (Psych 3)
YAML.safe_load("--- !ruby/object:Foo {}", permitted_classes: [Foo]) # Ruby 3.0- (Psych 3)
YAML.load("--- !ruby/object:Foo {}", permitted_classes: [Foo])      # Ruby 3.1+ (Psych 4)
YAML.dump(foo)