return-never-call

January 17, 2021 ยท View on GitHub

:mag: requires type information

Enforces returning or throwing the result of a function or method call that returns never.

Rationale

Functions that return never, or in other words never return to the control flow of the caller, make the following statements unreachable. TypeScript as of v3.7 can detect some explicitly typed never-returning calls and use them for control flow analysis. However, this is very limited to avoid circularities of type information affecting control flow and control flow affecting type information. Therefore you need to help TypeScript by explicitly using return or throw in some cases. That won't change runtime behavior, but allows for better control flow and type checking.

Examples

:thumbsdown: Examples of incorrect code

const neverReturns = () => { throw new Error() }; // this syntax is not recognized by TypeScript's control flow analysis

function fn() {
  neverReturns(); // use 'return' or 'throw' here
  console.log('impossible'); // statement is unreachable but no tool complains
}

neverReturns(); // no 'return' possible here, use 'throw' instead

:thumbsup: Examples of correct code

const neverReturns = () => { throw new Error() };

function fn() {
  return neverReturns();
}

throw neverReturns();

function returnNever(): never { throw new Error(); }
returnNever(); // TypeScript correctly handles this

Further Reading