S1186 — Methods should not be empty

Why is this an issue?

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 Overridable methods, as the implementation might not be required in the base class
• empty methods that override a MustOverride method as the implementation is mandatory for child class
• empty overrides in test assemblies for mocking purposes

How to fix it

Code examples

Noncompliant code example

Sub ShouldNotBeEmpty()  ' Noncompliant - method is empty
End Sub

Sub NotImplementedYet()  ' Noncompliant - method is empty
End Sub

Sub WillNeverBeImplemented()  ' Noncompliant - method is empty
End Sub

Sub EmptyOnPurpose()  ' Noncompliant - method is empty
End Sub

Compliant solution

Sub ShouldNotBeEmpty()
    DoSomething()
End Sub

Sub NotImplementedYet()
    Throw New NotImplementedException
End Sub

Sub WillNeverBeImplemented()
    Throw New NotSupportedException
End Sub

Sub EmptyOnPurpose()
    ' Do nothing because of X
End Sub