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Extend the silent-catch gate: promise-form handlers and literal false positives #213
Description
Follow-ups from the #205 review of PR #210, both non-blocking there:
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Promise-form silent catches stay ungated by design. The Silent catches: a bare catch{} swallows the error with no reason on record #205 gate covers the statement form only. The scanned sources carry ~198
.catch(handlers, some bare non-voidswallows (e.g.core/src/host/diagnostics.js:222,:237,:246;core/src/host/store.js:454;core/src/host/agents.js:132-133). Decide the rule for the promise form — at minimum require avoidprefix or a why-comment on a bare swallow — and extendcheck-empty-catch.mjsaccordingly. -
Literal false positives. The text
catch {}inside a comment or a string literal of a scanned file trips the gate (fail-safe: over-flags, never misses). Stripping comments/strings before matching closes it.
Where it sits: .github/scripts/check-empty-catch.mjs; its test file carries the cases.
Suggested direction: take the two separately — the promise-form rule needs a decision on the idiom's status first; the literal hardening is mechanical.
Activity
Birfy commentedon Oct 18, 2026
Item 2 (literal false positives) is in #266: the gate blanks comments and the inside of strings, templates and regex literals before matching, so a
catch {}written there is no longer reported. A}inside a string no longer cuts a block short either.Item 1 (promise form) needs a decision before anyone codes it. There are about 51 bare non-
void.catch(() => {} | undefined | null)calls in the shipped sources.Proposed rule:
.catch(() => {})whose result is dropped (a statement or anawaitstatement) needs avoidprefix or a why-comment..catch(() => undefined)/.catch(() => null)used as a value fallback (await x().catch(() => undefined)assigned or tested) stays allowed.Expected once decided:
check-empty-catch.mjsflags only the first form, and the existing sites get avoidprefix or a one-line reason.docs: note the discarded-catch rule in the four owning subsystem docs (…