Inconsistent false positive on 'passed ByVal and assigned a value' inspection

[daFreeMan]

Win10, Excel2016 (desktop), RD .3280

Public Sub foo(ByVal myRange As Range)
  myRange.Value = "Bar"
End Sub

Generates no inspection. However, my real code (snippet):

Public Sub SetSummaryCell(ByVal SummaryRange As Range, ByVal value As Variant, ByVal FormatFlag As String)

  SummaryRange.value = CStr(value)
'other stuff
End Sub

generates the inspection.

[MDoerner]

This is not inconsistent, but still wrong. In the code snippet, for some reason the inspection thinks that the member value refers to the parameter value, which gets passed by value. Since the potential MCVE does not have the parameter value it does not reproduce the issue.

[retailcoder]

Hmm, so a resolver bug more than an inspection issue then?

[retailcoder]

Could also be an artifact of how the older inspections kind of tried to do the resolver's job - this looks like it could be a case of the inspection not using the resolved member call; investigation is needed.

[MDoerner]

It is the resolver. The inspection just looks for by value parameters with an assignment reference.

[MDoerner]

The problem seems to be that member access resolution generally fails for members of parameters. More precisely, the MemberAccessDefaultBinding does not take into consideration that a lExpression with classification Variable might have the DeclarationType Parameter.
I will see whether that really is the cause when I am back home tonight.

[daFreeMan]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it is inconsistent. After noting the conversation, and especially the comment about the MCVE not having the Variant parameter, I made this:

Public Sub foo(ByVal myRange As Range, ByVal value As Variant)
  myRange.value = "Bar"
End Sub

and it does not generate the error.

More food for thought.

[MDoerner]

Are you sure your code snippet triggers the inspection? I do not get the inspection result for the snippet.

[daFreeMan]

The MCVE does not generate the error, but my real code most certainly does.

Maybe this has been obvious to the two of you, but it just hit me. The inspection is legit - I'm passing ByVal SummaryRange As Range, then assigning to SummaryRange.Value, so I am assigning to a parameter passed by value.

However, the parameter is an object, so passing the pointer to the object ByVal really shouldn't be picked up by the inspection when I'm assigning to a property of said object, only if I'm trying Set SummaryRange = SomeOtherRange.

Right?

[retailcoder]

@daFreeMan no, you're not assigning the SummaryRange reference, which is what the inspection means to be flagging. You're assigning a member of SummaryRange, i.e. SummaryRange.Value, which shouldn't trigger the inspection in any way. This is absolutely a false positive.

[MDoerner]

Is there anything else in the method that could trigger the inspection? I cannot reproduce the issue with the snippet provided, i.e. the following code does not cause an inspection result for me, neither in a standard module nor in a class module.

Public Sub SetSummaryCell(ByVal SummaryRange As Range, ByVal value As Variant, ByVal FormatFlag As String)

  SummaryRange.value = CStr(value)
'other stuff
End Sub