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

This cop checks for uses of rescue in its modifier form.

Example:

# bad
some_method rescue handle_error

# good
begin
  some_method
rescue
  handle_error
end

This cop checks for missing top-level documentation of classes and modules. Classes with no body are exempt from the check and so are namespace modules - modules that have nothing in their bodies except classes, other modules, or constant definitions.

The documentation requirement is annulled if the class or module has a "#:nodoc:" comment next to it. Likewise, "#:nodoc: all" does the same for all its children.

Example:

# bad
class Person
  # ...
end

# good
# Description/Explanation of Person class
class Person
  # ...
end

This cop checks for uses of rescue in its modifier form.

Example:

# bad
some_method rescue handle_error

# good
begin
  some_method
rescue
  handle_error
end

Checks that braces used for hash literals have or don't have surrounding space depending on configuration.

Example: EnforcedStyle: space

# The `space` style enforces that hash literals have
# surrounding space.

# bad
h = {a: 1, b: 2}

# good
h = { a: 1, b: 2 }

Example: EnforcedStyle: no_space

# The `no_space` style enforces that hash literals have
# no surrounding space.

# bad
h = { a: 1, b: 2 }

# good
h = {a: 1, b: 2}

Example: EnforcedStyle: compact

# The `compact` style normally requires a space inside
# hash braces, with the exception that successive left
# braces or right braces are collapsed together in nested hashes.

# bad
h = { a: { b: 2 } }

# good
h = { a: { b: 2 }}

Checks that braces used for hash literals have or don't have surrounding space depending on configuration.

Example: EnforcedStyle: space

# The `space` style enforces that hash literals have
# surrounding space.

# bad
h = {a: 1, b: 2}

# good
h = { a: 1, b: 2 }

Example: EnforcedStyle: no_space

# The `no_space` style enforces that hash literals have
# no surrounding space.

# bad
h = { a: 1, b: 2 }

# good
h = {a: 1, b: 2}

Example: EnforcedStyle: compact

# The `compact` style normally requires a space inside
# hash braces, with the exception that successive left
# braces or right braces are collapsed together in nested hashes.

# bad
h = { a: { b: 2 } }

# good
h = { a: { b: 2 }}

This cop checks for uses of double negation (!!) to convert something to a boolean value. As this is both cryptic and usually redundant, it should be avoided.

Example:

# bad
!!something

# good
!something.nil?

Please, note that when something is a boolean value !!something and !something.nil? are not the same thing. As you're unlikely to write code that can accept values of any type this is rarely a problem in practice.

This cop checks for trailing code after the method definition.

Example:

# bad
def some_method
do_stuff; end

def do_this(x)
  baz.map { |b| b.this(x) } end

def foo
  block do
    bar
  end end

# good
def some_method
  do_stuff
end

def do_this(x)
  baz.map { |b| b.this(x) }
end

def foo
  block do
    bar
  end
end