Eclipse marks lines as dead code

Question

I have this function with some dead code, marked by Eclipse.

I have two lines that check a & b. Lines that check b are marked as null.

    public int[] runThis(List<Integer> buildIds, List<Integer> scenarios, boolean oflag) {

    int rating[] = new int[scenarios.size()];

    if(buildIds == null) {
        System.out.println("ERROR - Building ID list is null!");
        return null;
    }

    if(scenarios == null) {
        System.out.println("ERROR - Scenario list is null!"); //dead
        return null; //dead
    }

    return rating;      

}

Why does Ellipse make the two lines as dead? Any help? Thanks very much for your time.

Answer 1

Because you've already called scenarios.size() in your array constructor. This guarantees scenarios isn't null or it will have thrown an exception by that point.