Document empty blocks

[carlwilson]

There are 12 occurrences of this issue. Why is this an issue? Checks for empty blocks. This check does not validate sequential blocks.

Sequential blocks won't be checked. Also, no violations for fallthrough:

switch (a) {
  case 1:                          // no violation
  case 2:                          // no violation
  case 3: someMethod(); { }        // no violation
  default: break;
}

This check processes LITERAL_CASE and LITERAL_DEFAULT separately. So, if tokens=LITERAL_DEFAULT, following code will not trigger any violation, as the empty block belongs to LITERAL_CASE:

Configuration:

<module name="EmptyBlock">
  <property name="tokens" value="LITERAL_DEFAULT"/>
</module>

Result:

switch (a) {
  default:        // no violation for "default:" as empty block belong to "case 1:"
  case 1: { }
}

There is a similar argument with a more explicit example presented here: https://help.semmle.com/wiki/display/JAVA/Empty+branch+of+conditional%2C+or+empty+loop+body.

You can find all occurrences of this issue here on Codacy.

[MartinSpeller]

Document empty blocks #575 - Assigned to TBA