Empty Try Block

ID

kotlin.empty_try_block

Severity

low

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Reliability

Language

Kotlin

Tags

CWE:1071, empty, reliability

Description

Reports try blocks whose body contains no statements.

A try block exists to wrap code that may throw an exception so that a catch or finally clause can handle the outcome. When the body is empty there is nothing to protect: any attached catch and finally blocks are unreachable dead code. Such constructs almost always result from an incomplete implementation.

Rationale

// Bad — try body is empty, nothing is protected
try { } catch (e: Exception) { handle(e) }  // FLAW

// OK — try body contains code to protect
try {
    riskyOperation()
} catch (e: Exception) {
    handle(e)
}

Remediation

  • Add the code that should be protected inside the try block.

  • If no code needs protection, remove the entire try / catch construct.

References