no-empty-catch.md

no-empty-catch

Disallow empty catch blocks that silently swallow errors.

Rule Details

Property	Value
Type	problem
Fixable	No
Recommended	warn
Strict	error

Rationale

An empty catch block discards the error entirely. The caller has no indication that anything went wrong, diagnostics are impossible, and bugs become untraceable. Every caught error must be handled in some meaningful way: logged, re-thrown, returned as a result, or surfaced to the user.

Examples

✅ Correct

try {
  riskyOperation();
} catch (err) {
  logger.error('riskyOperation failed', err);
}

try {
  connectToDb();
} catch (err) {
  throw new Error(`Database connection failed: ${err}`);
}

try {
  cleanup();
} catch {
  throw new Error('Cleanup step failed');
}

❌ Incorrect

try {
  riskyOperation();
} catch (err) {}

try {
  connectToDb();
} catch {}

try {
  cleanup();
} catch (err) {
} finally {
  teardown();
}

Configuration

This rule has no options:

'zero-tolerance/no-empty-catch': 'error'