Reuse of local variable

Reports local variables that are "reused" overwriting their values with new values unrelated to their original use.

Such a local variable reuse may be confusing, as the intended semantics of the local variable may vary with each use. It may also be prone to bugs if due to the code changes, the values that have been considered overwritten actually appear to be alive. It is a good practice to keep variable lifetimes as short as possible, and not to reuse local variables for the sake of brevity.

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

ReuseOfLocalVariable

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Data flow

Example:

    void x() {
        String s = "one";
        System.out.println("s = " + s);
        s = "two"; //reuse of local variable 's'
        System.out.println("s = " + s);
    }

Availability

By default bundled with: IntelliJ IDEA 2024.1, Qodana for JVM 2024.1,
Can be installed with plugin: Java, 241.18072

Last modified: 18 June 2024