Defect: Compiler wrongly complains about unreachable code.

Question

Here is a packaged procedure body for a procedure that is listed in the package spec:
PROCEDURE RunReportPreRunCustomCode
(in_report_oid IN NUMBER
,in_pageSize_nr IN INTEGER
,in_parameterList_tt IN parameterKeyValuePair_TT
,inout_reportRun_oid IN OUT NOCOPY NUMBER
,inout_error_yn IN OUT NOCOPY VARCHAR2
,inout_outputOption IN OUT NOCOPY VARCHAR2
,inout_reportOutPut_cl IN OUT NOCOPY NCLOB
IS
BEGIN
NULL; -- Compiler shows this warning for this line: Warning(667,7): PLW-06002: Unreachable code
-- dbms_output.put_line('x');
END;
It gets better! I removed the comment line and the warning stopped showing up. I put the comment line back in, and it hasn't come back (yet). I've seen this before.
Removing the comment in this procedure also caused the same warning for another procedure to go away!
The code in that procedure looked like this:
BEGIN
IF in_some_param IS NULL THEN
NULL;-- Compiler shows this warning for this line: Warning(667,7): PLW-06002: Unreachable code
ELSE
...

Answer 1

Does compiling in SQL*Plus also produce the same behaviour? It should, since they both use the same compiler.
I've just tested this in SQL*PLus. After setting the plsql_warnings to "enable:all" to match the default settings in sqldeveloper, the same warning is produced so it is a dbms issue, not sqldeveloper issue.
Edited by: Jim Smith on Oct 11, 2008 4:01 PM