dead code
noun1
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences, Software compilation Instructions that, when executed, have no effect on the running of the program.
- Much dead code elimination is actually done on intermediate representations of your code, which may contain unnecessary intermediate calculations[…]2006, William Von Hagen, The definitive guide to GCC:
2
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Programming, Sciences A portion of source code that will never be executed as part of the running program.
- Many software projects contain much dead code in the form of deprecated functions.
- If the test data is exhaustive you can even locate dead code: program code that is never executed.2003, Diomidis Spinellis, Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective, Addison-Wesley Professional, →ISBN, page 372:
- Related terms
- no-op