Proposal: no-useless-else rule

Please describe what the rule should do:

If an if block contains a throw statement, the else block becomes unnecessary. Its contents can be placed outside of the block.

What category of rule is this? (place an “X” next to just one item)

[x] Enforces code style [ ] Warns about a potential error [ ] Suggests an alternate way of doing something [ ] Other (please specify:)

Provide 2-3 code examples that this rule will warn about:

// With this rule, this would cause ESLint to warn:

if (foo)
    throw new Error('foo');
else
    return bar;

// This rule would *not* warn about this:

if (foo)
    throw new Error('foo');

return bar;

Why should this rule be included in ESLint (instead of a plugin)?

It seems generally applicable. It is analogous to the currently-include no-else-return rule.

[not-an-aardvark]

👍 for having a way to report this, but I wonder if it would be better to just expand the no-else-return rule to include all statements that cause control flow jumps (return, throw, break and continue).

Maybe we could rename it to no-useless-else or something.

[btmills]

@platinumazure I added one more 👍 so we can accept this, and yes, going with @not-an-aardvark’s no-useless-else proposal. @Trott would you be willing to update your original issue to use no-useless-else?