Why is Eclipse telling me that I have a "Dead code"?

Question

I cannot figure out why Ecplise won't let me execute the 3rd statement (i++) in my for loop due to it being "Dead Code", which I don't even know what that means. Anyone know why?

 public int getIdx(int studID) {
        for (int i = 0; i < classSize; i++) {
            if (this.StudID[i] == studID) {
                return i;
            }
            break;
        }
        return -1;      
    }

Answer 1

This is because your loop breaks after first iteration.

public int getIdx(int studID) {
  for (int i = 0; i < classSize; i++) {
    if (this.StudID[i] == studID) {
      return i;
    }
    break; // <-- because of this, second iteration is never executed
  }
  return -1;      
}

Did you mean to place break under the if condition? If so, actually, you don't need it since return already breaks a loop.

It seems like you're trying to do lineary search. Here is how it may look like.

public int getIdx(int studID) {
  for (int i = 0; i < classSize; i++) {
    if (this.StudID[i] == studID) {
      return i;
    }
  }
  return -1;      
}

Answer 2

The dead code pretty much means that there will be lines of code that are never going to run. Such as having always true in an if-else statement. Your loop will break after the first iteration, so it is pointless to have a for-loop if the line of code is gonna execute only once.

Removing the break; should do the trick! You don't need to stop the loop because it already does when you return the i variable.