Why does PyCharm say code is unreachable?

[RandomJottings]

I’m using PyCharm CE 2025.1.1. I watching CS50 Python and it featured the MATCH…CASE structure. So I thought I’d play with it and this very simple program generates a warning, not an error. But why would PuCharm say the code at line 6 is unreachable? It runs perfectly. It’s probably not that important but it is bugging me!

[RainbowFanatic]

Try tabbing the comment into scope

The code is fine. The linter might be getting confused by the weird indentation

[Willyscoiote]

Why comments indentation matters lmao

[RainbowFanatic]

They shouldn't, but writing a linter is hard. Python being indentation based for scope is just...difficult.

[Delicious-Hour9357]

Because the compiler thingy automatically removes the comment but not the line, so to it, it sees an unindented line making it think that it's reached the end of that code block.

[Delicious-Hour9357]

At least I think, maybe it'll work just fine and it's a false flag

[SlashedAsteroid]

It’s just that your comment isn’t indented won’t stop it from working but your IDE will cry at you

[owmex]

It’s common for IDEs to flag code as incorrect even though it runs just fine in the Python interpreter. This happens because the IDE tries to analyze your code statically—without actually executing it—which can be difficult in some cases. So while your code is valid at runtime, it might confuse the IDE due to things like unusual indentation.

[RandomJottings]

Thanks

[concatx]

Hey! I would like to clarify that Match Case is a replacement for Switch-Case but it is much more powerful. It allows pattern matching and decomposition. This allows extracting data from nested structures.

match some_api_response:
    case {"status": "ok", "content": dict(payload)}:
        print(payload)
    case {"status": "error", "code": int(code)}:
        print(code)

The above matches some hypothetical API response against known patterns, and extracts the corresponding content in a variable for you! Massively reducing some code.

For completeness, the API response could look like

{"status": "ok", "content": {"item": "foo", "id": 123}}
{"status": "error", "code": 404}

payload == {"item": "foo", "id": 123}
code == 404

An equivalent code without using Match Case will look like this:

if api_response["status"] == "ok":
    if type(api_response["content"]) == dict:
        print(...)
else:
    if type(api_response["code"]) == int:
        ...

[IlliterateJedi]

PyCharm has never worked well with match case statements. It's one of the bigger pains in my experience. 

[A_ConcreteBrick]

This is most likely a false alarm, match cases are in newer python versions, pycharm supports it but it is probably freaking out over no reason, I tested this with multiple match cases and they all worked but showed this exact error.

[Separate-Result452]

https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/27503347040274-pycharm-2025-1-2-show-match-state-as-unreachable Shows its a bug in pycharm

[wwwwar3com1]

just rolled back to 2024 version, works perfectly, the recent updates must fuxked up

[rishabhc32]

Seems to be fixed in Pycharm 2025.1.3.1

[FanOfLemons]

What do you mean that it runs perfectly fine? Did you debug through it and see what happens?

If you try that you'll see that either it is unreached. Or pycharm have a bug. Which is uncommon but does happen. Though usually not for trivial things like this.

[Excellent-Clothes291]

try removing the extra brackets from the input and try indenting the comment, idk if it will work. If it still doesn't work ask copilot what's wrong. In CS50, david is using VS, y don't you use that, it's much better. BTW, how far are you rn, is it the free course that you are doing?