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Comment by troels | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm just slow, but what was the bug in that code?

He explains it right in the text.

  if (someBool)
    return A;

  ...

  if (!someBool)
    return B;

Now - both cases are covered. The result will be A or B, never anything else. Statements after the second return are unreachable.

Almost. The result could be something else if it's in the code in the middle. It just won't ever get to whatever's after that return B.

Ah .. He expected it to reach the unreachable code? I thought that it did reach `return R`, which would be totally strange and could indeed be explained by a compiler bug. (Or more likely, by side effects in the code between the two checks)

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