detect-hidden-contracts

You can detect undocummented code assumptions by scanning for implicit contracts related to environment variables, function ordering, object shapes, and error handling. Identifying these hidden assumptions prevents runtime bugs and silent failures in critical applications.

Ordering contracts are implicit dependencies on the correct execution sequence of functions, often through shared mutable state. Violating these hidden assumptions affects application reliability by introducing subtle temporal bugs and runtime errors.

To check your codebase for unvalidated environment variables, run an analysis that detects code assuming environment variables will always be set. This identifies missing validation for critical operations like database connection strings, preventing silent errors and crashes.

Yes, you can use code analysis to detect assumed object shapes without validation. By scanning the codebase for implicit shape contracts, you find code that expects specific object structures, preventing runtime errors when these shape assumptions are violated.

The best way to identify temporal contracts in a financial application codebase is to analyze the code for temporal state requirements. This detects code relying on certain states being present at specific times, preventing subtle bugs in critical operations.

Your code silently fails because of hidden error contracts where the code expects specific error types but lacks handling for other errors. Detecting these implicit assumptions ensures robust error handling and prevents silent failures during runtime.