Why is this an issue?

An empty function is generally considered bad practice and can lead to confusion, readability, and maintenance issues. Empty functions bring no functionality and are misleading to others as they might think the function implementation fulfills a specific and identified requirement.

There are several reasons for a function not to have a body:

• It is an unintentional omission, and should be fixed to prevent an unexpected behavior in production.
• It is not yet, or never will be, supported. In this case an exception should be thrown.
• The method is an intentionally-blank override. In this case a nested comment should explain the reason for the blank override.

How to fix it

Code examples

Noncompliant code example

fun shouldNotBeEmpty() {  // Noncompliant - method is empty
}

fun notImplemented() {  // Noncompliant - method is empty
}

fun emptyOnPurpose() {  // Noncompliant - method is empty
}

Compliant solution

fun shouldNotBeEmpty() {
  doSomething()
}

fun notImplemented() {
  throw UnsupportedOperationException("notImplemented() cannot be performed because ...")
}

fun emptyOnPurpose() {
  // comment explaining why the method is empty
}