alwaysThrows top-level constant

@Deprecated("Use a return type of 'Never' instead") Object const alwaysThrows

Annotation marking a function as always throwing.

Used to annotate a function. Indicates that the function always throws. Any instance members that override an annotated function are also expected to conform to this contract.

In pre Dart 2.0 code, tools like as the analyzer could use this to understand whether a block of code "exits". For example:

@alwaysThrows toss() { throw 'Thrown'; }

int fn(bool b) {
  if (b) {
    return 0;
  } else {
    toss();
    print("Hello.");
  }
}

Without the annotation on toss, it would look as though fn doesn't always return a value. The annotation shows that fn does always exit. In addition, the annotation reveals that any statements following a call to toss (like the print call) are dead code.

Tools, such as the analyzer, can also expect this contract to be enforced; that is, tools may emit warnings if a function with this annotation doesn't always throw.

Deprecated: This annotation is deprecated and will be removed in a future release of package:meta. After Dart 2.9, you can instead specify a return type of Never to indicate that a function never returns.

Implementation

@Deprecated("Use a return type of 'Never' instead")
const Object alwaysThrows = _AlwaysThrows();