Logging call not guarded by log condition

Reports logging calls that are not surrounded by a guard condition. The evaluation of a call's arguments can be expensive. Surrounding a logging call with a guard clause prevents that cost when logging is disabled for the level used by the logging statement. This is especially useful for the least serious level (trace, debug, finest) of logging calls, because those are most often disabled in a production environment.

Example:

  public class TestObject {
    void test(Object object) {
      LOG.debug("some logging " + expensiveCalculation(1));
    }
  }

After a quick-fix is applied:

  public class TestObject {
    void test(Object object) {
      if(LOG.isDebugEnabled()){
        LOG.debug("some logging " + expensiveCalculation(1));
      }
    }
  }

This inspection supports Log4j2 and the SLF4J logging frameworks (except builders).

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.

LogStatementNotGuardedByLogCondition

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 | JVM languages | Logging

New in 2024.2

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Logging call not guarded by log condition inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Warn on

Default value:

debug level and lower

Other available settings:

all log levels
warn level and lower
info level and lower
trace level

Process unguarded logging calls with constant messages

Default value:

Not selected

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 LogStatementNotGuardedByLogCondition

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