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unnecessary-placeholder (PIE790)

Added in v0.0.208 · Related issues · View source

Derived from the flake8-pie linter.

Fix is always available.

What it does

Checks for unnecessary pass statements and ellipsis (...) literals in functions, classes, and other blocks.

Why is this bad?

In Python, the pass statement and ellipsis (...) literal serve as placeholders, allowing for syntactically correct empty code blocks. The primary purpose of these nodes is to avoid syntax errors in situations where a statement or expression is syntactically required, but no code needs to be executed.

If a pass or ellipsis is present in a code block that includes at least one other statement (even, e.g., a docstring), it is unnecessary and should be removed.

Example

def func():
    """Placeholder docstring."""
    pass

Use instead:

def func():
    """Placeholder docstring."""

Or, given:

def func():
    """Placeholder docstring."""
    ...

Use instead:

def func():
    """Placeholder docstring."""

Fix safety

This rule's fix is marked as unsafe in the rare case that the pass or ellipsis is followed by a string literal, since removal of the placeholder would convert the subsequent string literal into a docstring.

References