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The presence of unused values may indicate significant logic errors. To prevent such errors, unused values should be identified and removed from code.

Wiki MarkupThis recommendation is a specific case of \[[MSC12-A. Detect and remove code that has no effect]\].

Non-Compliant Code Example

Wiki MarkupIn this example, {{p2}} is assigned the value returned by {{bar()}}, but that value is never used. Note this example assumes that {{foo()}} and {{bar()}} return valid pointers (see \[[DCL30-C. Declare objects with appropriate storage durations]\]).

int *p1, *p2;
p1 = foo();
p2 = bar();

if (baz()) {
  return p1;
}
else {
  p2 = p1;
}
return p2;

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