In computer programming, dead code is code in the source code of a program which is executed but whose result is never used in any other computation. The execution of dead code wastes computation time as its results are never used.
While the result of a dead computation may never be used, the dead code may raise exceptions or affect some global state, thus removal of such code may change the output of the program and introduce unintended bugs. Compiler optimizations are typically conservative in their approach to dead code removal if there is any ambiguity as to whether removal of the dead code will affect the program output.
Famous quotes containing the words dead and/or code:
“For all of him dead and
gone and vanished from us, and all of him which
clings to our speech black god of our time.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“Faultless honesty is a sine qua non of business life. Not alone the honesty according to the moral code and the Bible. When I speak of honesty I refer to the small, hidden, evasive meannesses of our natures. I speak of the honesty of ourselves to ourselves.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)