Method has an empty body
ID |
objectivec.maintainability.empty_function_body |
Severity |
low |
Remediation Complexity |
medium |
Remediation Risk |
low |
Remediation Effort |
low |
Resource |
Dead Code |
Language |
Objective-C |
Description
Reports an instance or class method definition whose body holds nothing at all, whether the braces are written on the signature line or below it. Method declarations in an @interface have no body and are not reported, nor is a body carrying a statement or an explanatory comment.
Rationale
An empty method gives a reader no way to tell an unfinished stub from a deliberate no-op, and the two are wrong in different ways. A stub accepts every call silently and does none of the work its selector promises, so the missing effect surfaces far from here — a view that never refreshes, a cache that is never invalidated. A genuinely empty override is legitimate in Cocoa, where protocols and superclasses expect a selector to exist, but with nothing inside the braces to say so it reads exactly like the unfinished case.
The following code illustrates the pattern detected by this rule:
@interface Widget ()
- (void)prepare;
- (void)teardown;
@end
@implementation Widget
// FLAGGED: Method has an empty body
- (void)prepare { }
@endRemediation
Implement the method, or delete it along with the call sites that reach it when the work turns out not to be needed. Where an empty body is required — an optional protocol method the class must expose, a template method with nothing to add — write a comment inside the braces saying so, which both documents the decision and stops this rule reporting it.