Empty Finally Block

ID

kotlin.empty_finally_block

Severity

low

Remediation Complexity

auto_fix

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Reliability

Language

Kotlin

Tags

CWE:1071, empty, reliability

Description

Reports finally blocks that contain no statements and therefore have no effect.

A finally block is intended to run cleanup code that must execute regardless of whether an exception was thrown. An empty finally provides no such guarantee and adds only syntactic noise. Such blocks typically result from an incomplete implementation or from clean-up code that was removed without removing the surrounding finally.

Rationale

// Bad — finally block has no effect
try {
    riskyOperation()
} finally { }  // FLAW

// OK — finally performs cleanup
try {
    riskyOperation()
} finally {
    cleanup()
}

// OK — finally closes a resource
try {
    stream.write(data)
} finally {
    stream.close()
}

Remediation

  • Remove the empty finally { } entirely if no cleanup is required.

  • Add the intended cleanup logic (close resources, release locks, reset state) inside the block.

References