Empty Blocks

ID

swift.empty_blocks

Severity

low

Remediation Complexity

medium

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

medium

Resource

Code Smell

Language

Swift

Tags

code-smell, reliability

Description

Reports loops (while, for, repeat …​ while) and if statements with an empty body. Almost always a typo, a stub left from incremental development, or a busy-wait.

while cond { }              // FLAW
for x in xs { }             // FLAW
if cond { }                 // FLAW

while cond { tick() }       // OK
if cond { f() }             // OK

Rationale

An empty body discards the control structure’s purpose. Empty if bodies often indicate a forgotten implementation; empty loops are usually incomplete refactors or accidental busy-waits.

Remediation

Either fill the body, remove the control statement, or — if the intent is to consume an iterator — be explicit:

// Materialize an iterator (rare; explicit).
let it = makeIterator()
_ = it.makeIterator()

// Comment when you intentionally suppress the block.
if cond {
    // intentionally no-op, see <reason>
}

References