An empty method is generally considered bad practice and can lead to confusion, readability, and maintenance issues. Empty methods bring no
functionality and are misleading to others as they might think the method implementation fulfills a specific and identified requirement.
There are several reasons for a method 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.
Exceptions
The following empty methods are considered compliant:
- empty
virtual methods as the implementation might not be required in the base class
- empty methods that override an
abstract method as the implementation is mandatory for child class
- empty overrides in test assemblies for mocking purposes
