Misleading return code when running terraform plan

[valadan]

Terraform Version

v0.11.7

Terraform command entered

terraform plan -destroy -detailed-exitcode 

Expected Behavior

This is a new project and no infrastructure has been created as yet.

In the presence of the -detailed-exitcode option, I would expect the return code to be 0 (i.e. Succeeded with empty diff - no changes)

Actual Behavior

The command completes with a return code of 2 (i.e. Succeeded with non-empty diff - changes present)

In this case, the return code is misleading since there is no infrastructure to destroy since nothing has been created as yet.

Steps to Reproduce

Run the following command

1. terraform plan -destroy -detailed-exitcode

Additional Context

References

[hashibot]

Hello! 🤖

This issue relates to an older version of Terraform that is no longer in active development, and because the area of Terraform it relates to has changed significantly since the issue was opened we suspect that the issue is either fixed or that the circumstances around it have changed enough that we'd need an updated issue report in order to reproduce and address it.

If you're still seeing this or a similar issue in the latest version of Terraform, please do feel free to open a new bug report! Please be sure to include all of the information requested in the template, even if it might seem redundant with the information already shared in this issue, because the internal details relating to this problem are likely to be different in the current version of Terraform.

Thanks!

I'm going to lock this issue because it has been closed for 30 days ⏳. This helps our maintainers find and focus on the active issues.

If you have found a problem that seems similar to this, please open a new issue and complete the issue template so we can capture all the details necessary to investigate further.