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 if the length of a method exceeds some maximum value. Comment lines can optionally be ignored. The maximum allowed length is configurable.

This cop checks for extra/unnecessary whitespace.

Example:

# good if AllowForAlignment is true
name      = "RuboCop"
# Some comment and an empty line

website  += "/bbatsov/rubocop" unless cond
puts        "rubocop"          if     debug

# bad for any configuration
set_app("RuboCop")
website  = "https://github.com/bbatsov/rubocop"

This cop checks for rescue blocks with no body.

Example:

# bad

def some_method
  do_something
rescue
  # do nothing
end

Example:

# bad

begin
  do_something
rescue
  # do nothing
end

Example:

# good

def some_method
  do_something
rescue
  handle_exception
end

Example:

# good

begin
  do_something
rescue
  handle_exception
end