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MF004: empty-cells

✨ Formatting ⚠️ Unsafe Fixable

MF004: Empty cells that can be safely removed.

What it does

Detects cells that contain only: - Whitespace characters (spaces, tabs, newlines) - Comments (lines starting with #) - Pass statements (pass) - Any combination of the above

Why is this bad?

Empty cells can: - Create clutter in notebook structure - Add unnecessary complexity to the execution graph - Make notebooks harder to read and maintain - Increase file size without adding value

While not functionally breaking, removing empty cells improves code clarity and reduces visual noise.

Examples

Problematic: 

# Cell 1: Only whitespace

Problematic: 

# Cell 2: Only comments
# This is just a comment
# Nothing else here

Problematic: 

# Cell 3: Only pass statement
pass

Problematic: 

# Cell 4: Mix of comments, whitespace, and pass
# Some comment

pass
# Another comment

Note: This fix requires --unsafe-fixes because removing cells changes the notebook structure, and potentially removes user-intended content.

References