SemmleCode Professional comes with a wide range of pre-packaged analyses, from architectural properties and metrics, to statement-level checks for likely bugs and violations of best practice.

Empty Body of Finalizer

This query finds empty finalize() methods. At best, such a method is useless. At worst, it may prevent finalization from working properly: Unlike a constructor, a finalizer does not implicitly call the finalizer of the superclass, thus an empty finalizer prevents any finalization logic defined in any of its superclasses from being executed.

How to Interpret the Query Results

The query flags all such methods and provides a list of all detected occurrences in the results view.

How to Address the Query Results

Determine whether the finalizer could be removed. Alternatively, insert a call to super.finalize() as the last statement.

Source Code

import default

from FinalizeMethod finalize
where finalize.fromSource() and
      not exists (Stmt s | s.getEnclosingCallable() = finalize and
                           not s instanceof Block)
select finalize, "Empty finalize method"

References

An article on Writing a finalize() Method