Unsafe VFS recursion

Reports usage of VirtualFile.getChildren() inside recursive methods.

This may cause endless loops when iterating over cyclic symlinks. Use VfsUtilCore.visitChildrenRecursively() instead.

void processDirectory(VirtualFile dir) {
  for (VirtualFile file : dir.getChildren()) { // bad
    if (!file.isDirectory()) {
      processFile(file);
    } else {
      processDirectory(file); // recursive call
    }
  }
}

void processDirectory(VirtualFile dir) {
  VfsUtilCore.visitChildrenRecursively(dir, new VirtualFileVisitor<Void>() { // good
    @Override
    public boolean visitFile(@NotNull VirtualFile file) {
      if (!file.isDirectory()) {
        processFile(file);
      }
      return true;
    }
  });
}

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

UnsafeVfsRecursion

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Plugin DevKit | Code

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection UnsafeVfsRecursion

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025