Anti-pattern: redundant else branch containing the protection condition / error handling

Question

Often you see this code:

public void bla() { if (conditionTrue) { // long code here } else { // otherwise do nothing return; } // some more code } 

The else branch, obviously, is some kind of protective sentence that has shifted down, the indentation for the long code section can be smoothed out:

 public void bla() { if (!conditionTrue) return; // long code here // some more code } 

Some experts will cope with this by putting these extra branches in 3, 4 or 5 levels, creating code that is absolutely difficult to read.

I know these places somehow touching this topic:

• http://martinfowler.com/refactoring/catalog/replaceNestedConditionalWithGuardClauses.html
• http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GuardClause
• http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HandleErrorsInContext
• https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Mozilla_Coding_Style_Guide#Error_handling
• Should I use a guard clause and try to avoid the else clause?

Is this a named anti-pattern and what is its name?

Answer 1

It smells like an anti-pattern arrow code