A boolean flag argument is a reliable indicator for a violation of
the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP). You can fix this problem
by extracting the logic in the boolean flag into its own class
or method.
An if expression with an else branch is basically not necessary. You can rewrite the
conditions in a way that the else clause is not necessary and the code becomes simpler
to read. To achieve this, use early return statements, though you may
need to split the code it several smaller methods. For very simple assignments
you could also use the ternary operations.
Duplicated code can lead to software that is hard to understand and difficult to change. The Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle states:
Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.
When you violate DRY, bugs and maintenance problems are sure to follow. Duplicated code has a tendency to both continue to replicate and also to diverge (leaving bugs as two similar implementations differ in subtle ways).
Tuning
This issue has a mass of 136.
We set useful threshold defaults for the languages we support but you may want to adjust these settings based on your project guidelines.
The threshold configuration represents the minimum mass a code block must have to be analyzed for duplication. The lower the threshold, the more fine-grained the comparison.
If the engine is too easily reporting duplication, try raising the threshold. If you suspect that the engine isn't catching enough duplication, try lowering the threshold. The best setting tends to differ from language to language.