Static Code Analysis

Of the 150 checks currently available in VerifIEr, a good many are aimed at detecting errors in code. If you can find an error in the code prior to code generation, it is much easier and quicker to fix, and fixes an error that might not get detected during testing.

Until recently my favourite check was one that detects views that are used but not populated, since this usually indicates an error.

My new favourite is our latest check, which looks for ambiguous OR clauses in an expression. For example, the following code is ambiguous: IF x=1 OR x=2 AND y=3 and should be written as IF (x=1 OR x=2) AND y=3.

We ran this check on our current code base and a few clauses were highlighted. As an example of how difficult it can be to spot these errors, can anyone see the error in this READ statement? We didn't, but the check did!