S3400 — Methods should not return constants

Language
C#
Type
Code smell
Severity
Minor
Tags
confusing

Why is this an issue?

There’s no point in forcing the overhead of a method call for a method that always returns the same constant value. Even worse, the fact that a method call must be made will likely mislead developers who call the method thinking that something more is done. Declare a constant instead.

This rule raises an issue if on methods that contain only one statement: the return of a constant value.

Noncompliant code example


int GetBestNumber()
{
  return 12;  // Noncompliant
}

Compliant solution


const int BestNumber = 12;

or


static readonly int BestNumber = 12;

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