An empty statement is used to provide no statement, although the JavaScript syntax would expect one.
Syntax
;
Description
The empty statement is a semicolon (;) indicating that no statement will
be executed, even if JavaScript syntax requires one.
The opposite behavior, where you want multiple statements, but JavaScript only allows a single one, is possible using a block statement, which combines several statements into a single one.
Examples
Empty loop body
The empty statement is sometimes used with loop statements. See the following example with an empty loop body:
const arr = [1, 2, 3];
// Assign all array values to 0
for (let i = 0; i < arr.length; arr[i++] = 0) /* empty statement */ ;
console.log(arr);
// [0, 0, 0]
Unintentional usage
It is a good idea to comment intentional use of the empty statement, as it is not really obvious to distinguish from a normal semicolon.
In the following example, the usage is probably not intentional:
if (condition); // Caution, this "if" does nothing!
killTheUniverse(); // So this always gets executed!!!