# Should throw ERROR when if false?
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/should-throw-error-when-if-false/130401
**Category:** General Usage
**Created:** [July 2, 2025, 7:04am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/should-throw-error-when-if-false/130401 "2025-07-02T07:04:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@WalterMadelim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/WalterMadelim)
#### Post date: [July 2, 2025, 7:04am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/should-throw-error-when-if-false/130401/1 "2025-07-02T07:04:35Z")
```julia
julia> if false
break
end
ERROR: syntax: break or continue outside loop
Stacktrace:
[1] top-level scope
@ REPL[1]:1
```
I think this ERROR doesn’t have to be seen at REPL—it is distracting.
When the condition is false, we don’t actually care about the body of the `if`.
It should have no difference to the following—which has no ERROR
```julia
julia> quote
break
end
quote
#= REPL[2]:2 =#
break
end
```
---
### Author:  [@Benny](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Benny)
#### Post date: [July 2, 2025, 7:27am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/should-throw-error-when-if-false/130401/2 "2025-07-02T07:27:41Z")
Difference there is the code inside `quote` isn’t being evaluated…yet. If you do, you get the same error.
```julia
julia> eval(quote break end)
ERROR: syntax: break or continue outside loop
```
Evaluation of invalid Julia syntax throwing a syntax error is a lot better than mistakes silently doing something different from what the writer thought was possible.
> [@WalterMadelim](#):
>
> When the condition is false, we don’t actually care about the body of the `if`.
We should. The condition being sometimes true in practice makes that obvious, but even if it were strictly `if false`, the variables in the body are involved in lexical scoping for consistency. A conditional branch that never executes doesn’t make dead code that can be trivially eliminated, and that’s true across many languages. Sometimes we have to just omit code we don’t need.