C# Empty Statement

An empty statement has no effect. It is the simplest and fastest statement. In an empty statement, you type a semicolon. This can be used as a loop body or elsewhere. This helps with some syntax forms such as empty while loops with no parentheses.

This C# article covers the concept of an empty statement. An empty statement has no body.

Example

To begin, we look at the empty statement used in the body of a while loop. The empty statement does nothing, but when you use a while loop, you must always have a body for that loop, not just an iterative condition. Sometimes, you can use a boolean method and use it as the iterative condition in the loop, and then just put in an empty statement for the loop body.

Program that uses an empty statement [C#]

using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
	// Use an empty statement as the body of the while loop.
	while (Method())
	    ;
    }

    static int _number;

    static bool Method()
    {
	// Write the number, increment, and then return a bool.
	Console.WriteLine(_number);
	_number++;
	return _number < 5;
    }
}

Output

0
1
2
3
4

Alternative. You could put an empty block { } instead of an empty statement for the loop body here; functionality would be equivalent. This is, once again, a matter of style and you should conform to whatever the rules are (if any).

C# specification

The C# language specification is the best place to learn about all the statement, expression, and other types. The specification can help you understand the language in more of a conceptual, academic way, rather than a practical way. If you are well-practiced in writing C# programs, perhaps studying the specification could help improve you grasp of the total picture.

Summary

An empty statement in a C# program literally does nothing, but can help certain loops conform to the syntactic requirements of the language. There is an elegance, a grace, to using an empty statement, as though you as the programmer have attained such mastery over the language that you don't even need to type a statement to command the program to perform your every desire.