A simple refactoring for JS made with Acorn (https://github.com/acornjs/acorn)

remove_unnecessary_conditional.js

// this is our input
sourceCode = 'if (a > b) { return true } else { return false }'

// now we call the parser with the right set of options
const acorn = require('acorn')
programNode = acorn.parse(sourceCode, { ecmaVersion: 11, allowReturnOutsideFunction: true })

// validate the transformation can be made to this source code
containsOneStatement = programNode.body.length === 1
ifStatement = programNode.body[0]
thenHasASingleStatement = ifStatement.consequent.body.length === 1
elseHasASingleStatement = ifStatement.alternate.body.length === 1
thenReturnsTrue = ifStatement.consequent.body[0].argument.value === true
elseReturnsFalse = ifStatement.alternate.body[0].argument.value === false
refactoringCanBeApplied = containsOneStatement && thenHasASingleStatement && elseHasASingleStatement && thenReturnsTrue && elseReturnsFalse

// generate the new code
refactoredSourceCode = `return ${sourceCode.slice(ifStatement.test.start, ifStatement.test.end)}`

// verify the resulting code is what we expected!
expectedSourceCode = 'return a > b'
expectedSourceCode === refactoredSourceCode