Remove Flag Argument

Removes smells

Symptom

A function with a flag parameter that dispatches to different internal behaviors; the agent must trace the flag's value through the body to verify which branch any call exercises.

Goal

Each flag value becomes a named function; the agent reads call sites as direct invocations of the intended behavior.

Before the refactoring

function setDimension(name, value) {
  if (name === 'height') { /* ... */ }
  else if (name === 'width') { /* ... */ }
}

After the refactoring

function setHeight(value) { /* ... */ }
function setWidth(value)  { /* ... */ }

Example source: Illustrative example written for this site, not a quotation from any source.

Pressure

The agent must reason about flag values at every call site; the function's body conflates multiple concerns the agent must mentally split.

Tradeoff

If the branches share substantial body, splitting produces duplication the agent must keep in sync; pair this with Extract Function for shared internals.

Relief

Each variant becomes its own function with one signature; call sites name the intent directly, and the agent does not track a flag value through the function body to predict which branch runs.

Trap

Splitting flag-dispatched functions without extracting shared body creates N copies of the same logic the agent must keep in sync — the cure becomes the duplication smell.