Can you tell me the scenario for null pointer

[Mahesh_Raju]

Please provide

• Operating system: Windows
• IDE name and flavor/env: Eclipse 2020-09
• SonarLint plugin version: 7.4
• Is connected mode used: No
  • Connected to SonarCloud or SonarQube (and which version):

And a thorough description of the problem / question:

I got one more scenario where i dont believe there is no chance for null pointer as per flow, i wrote a Test java file to replicates

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class Test {

public static void main(String[] args) {
	int lob=2;
	function(lob);
	lob=1;
	function(lob);
}

private static void function(int lob) {
	Map map1 = null;
	Map map2 = null;
	if(lob == 1) 
		map1 = getMap();
	else
		map2 = getMap();
	int val = getValue(lob,map1,map2);
	System.out.println(val);
}

private static int getValue(int lob, Map map1, Map map2) {
	if(lob == 1) 
		return (int) map1.get("key");
	else
		return (int) map2.get("key");
}

private static Map getMap() {
	Map map = new HashMap();
	map.put("key", 1);
	return map;
}

}

Sonarlint saying Nullpointer can be thrown at below line
int val = getValue(lob,map1,map2);

Can you tell for what input for lob i can get Nullpointer

[Mahesh_Raju]

Can i expect any reply
Or do i need to think still sonar is not 100% efficient in saying issues

[Michael (Michael Gumowski)]

Hello @Mahesh_Raju,

Thank you for your patience. Please note that this community forum is operated at best, developers involved in answering threads and helping our users are doing this on a voluntary basis. If the current solution is not fitting your needs, you might want to consider our commercial support offering.

Now, regarding your question:

• You are right, there is no scenario that could lead to a null-pointer exception being thrown in your code snippet. This is indeed a False-Positive (FP) from the rule java:S2259. You can safely mark the issue as such, and ignore it.
• The FP is caused by the Java Analyzer Symbolic Execution (SE) engine not handling integer constants and relationships between integers. This is a known limitation of our SE engine, and having this in mind, it is likely to raise FPs as soon as there is integer-based logic in code. I know for a fact that our C++ engine does support such logic, but Java does not yet. I created the following ticket to track the FP, but I can not guarantee that we will fix the limitation soon, as it requires a significant amount of work to support the feature: SONARJAVA-4258.

Regards,
Michael