Bug 300239

Summary: Loop confuses null pointer analysis
Product: [Eclipse Project] JDT Reporter: Remy Suen <remy.suen>
Component: CoreAssignee: Ayushman Jain <amj87.iitr>
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: P3 CC: srikanth_sankaran
Version: 3.6   
Target Milestone: 3.6 M5   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Windows XP   
Whiteboard:

Description Remy Suen CLA 2010-01-20 13:33:57 EST 
Build id: I20100119-0800

public void v(Object o) {
  while (true) {
    o.toString(); // claims it may be null
    if (o != null); // claims it can't be null
  }
}

public void v2(Object o) {
  o = new Object();
  while (true) {
    o.toString(); // claims it may be null
    if (o != null); // claims it can't be null
  }
}

If you delete the if statement, then the warning on the toString() call will disappear.
Comment 1 Srikanth Sankaran CLA 2010-01-20 23:53:55 EST 
Ayush, please investigate.
Comment 2 Ayushman Jain CLA 2010-01-22 01:10:35 EST 
I think this got fixed with bug 293917. 
Remy, can you apply the patch given in bug 293917 and check again? I dont get the spurious warnings on the toString() call anymore.
Comment 3 Remy Suen CLA 2010-01-22 09:21:40 EST 
(In reply to comment #2)
> I think this got fixed with bug 293917. 
> Remy, can you apply the patch given in bug 293917 and check again? I dont get
> the spurious warnings on the toString() call anymore.

The bug does not occur with N20100121 so I guess the problem has been resolved (indirectly?).

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 293917 ***
Comment 4 Ayushman Jain CLA 2010-01-22 09:51:08 EST 
Yes this is has been fixed. 

Earlier, whenevr a null check was done against a local variable, it got 'tainted' and marked as maybe null. Since in a loop, null check warnings are always deferred till the end of the loop, at the time of deciding whether o in o.toString() is null or not, it'd have already got unnecessarily tainted by the if statement. Hence the warning.

This unnecessary tainting of local variables is done away with now.