bugprone-suspicious-semicolon¶

Finds most instances of stray semicolons that unexpectedly alter the meaning of the code. More specifically, it looks for if, while, for and for-range statements whose body is a single semicolon, and then analyzes the context of the code (e.g. indentation) in an attempt to determine whether that is intentional.

if (x < y);
{
  x++;
}

Here the body of the if statement consists of only the semicolon at the end of the first line, and x will be incremented regardless of the condition.

while ((line = readLine(file)) != NULL);
  processLine(line);

As a result of this code, processLine() will only be called once, when the while loop with the empty body exits with line == NULL. The indentation of the code indicates the intention of the programmer.

if (x >= y);
x -= y;

While the indentation does not imply any nesting, there is simply no valid reason to have an if statement with an empty body (but it can make sense for a loop). So this check issues a warning for the code above.

To solve the issue remove the stray semicolon or in case the empty body is intentional, reflect this using code indentation or put the semicolon in a new line. For example:

while (readWhitespace());
  Token t = readNextToken();

Here the second line is indented in a way that suggests that it is meant to be the body of the while loop - whose body is in fact empty, because of the semicolon at the end of the first line.

Either remove the indentation from the second line:

while (readWhitespace());
Token t = readNextToken();

… or move the semicolon from the end of the first line to a new line:

while (readWhitespace())
  ;

  Token t = readNextToken();

In this case the check will assume that you know what you are doing, and will not raise a warning.