Why?

It's possible that developers write these forms of code:

if (falseCondition);
{
    console.log("It's not true.");
}

for (let i = 0; i < 3; i++);
{
    doSomethingInLoop();
}

In the first example, the developer wants the if body to be executed only if falseCondition is met, but because he mistakenly typed a semicolon next to the parenthesis, the { ... } block isn't treated as if body, so it always gets executed.

In the second example, the developer wants doSomethingInLoop() to be executed 3 times, but because he mistakenly typed a semicolon next to the parenthesis, the { ... } block isn't treated as for body, so it gets executed only once.

If the if or for body is simply a semicolon, this semicolon is an "empty statement". Note that this is not "empty block", which is {}.

This rule disallows this form of semicolons.

Usage

In your eslint config file:

{
    "plugins": ["no-empty-statement"],
    "rules": {
        "no-empty-statement/no-empty-statement": "error"
    }
}

This rule has a string option:

• "ignore-statement-list-item" (default) allows "empty statement semicolons" in a container that can have multiple statements, for example an extra semicolon in the block { doSomething(); ; }
• "all" disallows all "empty statement semicolons".