Why is this an issue?
Duplicated string literals make the process of refactoring error-prone, since you must be sure to update all occurrences.
On the other hand, constants can be referenced from many places, but only need to be updated in a single place.
Noncompliant code example
With the default threshold of 3:
class A {
fun run() {
prepare("string literal") // Noncompliant - "string literal" is duplicated 3 times
execute("string literal")
release("string literal")
}
fun method() {
println("'") // Compliant - literal "'" has less than 5 characters and is excluded
println("'")
println("'")
}
}
Compliant solution
class A {
companion object {
const val CONSTANT = "string literal"
}
fun run() {
prepare(CONSTANT) // Compliant
execute(CONSTANT)
release(CONSTANT)
}
}
Exceptions
To prevent generating some false-positives, literals having 5 or less characters are excluded as well as literals containing only letters, digits
and '_'.
