Disallow use of the void operator. (no-void)

The void operator takes an operand and returns undefined: void expression will evaluate expression and return undefined. It can be used to ignore any side effects expression may produce:

The common case of using void operator is to get a “pure” undefined value as prior to ES5 the undefined variable was mutable:

// will always return undefined
(function(){
    return void 0;
})();

// will return 1 in ES3 and undefined in ES5+
(function(){
    undefined = 1;
    return undefined;
})();

// will throw TypeError is ES5+
(function(){
    'use strict';
    undefined = 1;
})();

Another common case is to minify code as void 0 is shorter than undefined:

foo = void 0;
foo = undefined;

When used with IIFE (immediately-invoked function expression) void can be used to force the function keyword to be treated as an expression instead of a declaration:

var foo = 1;
void function(){ foo = 1; }() // will assign foo a value of 1
+function(){ foo = 1; }() // same as above

function(){ foo = 1; }() // will throw SyntaxError

Some code styles prohibit void operator marking it as non-obvious and hard to read.

Rule Details

This rule aims to eliminate use of void operator.

The following patterns are considered problems:

/*eslint no-void: 2*/

void foo              /*error Expected 'undefined' and instead saw 'void'.*/

var foo = void bar(); /*error Expected 'undefined' and instead saw 'void'.*/

When Not To Use It

If you intentionally use the void operator then you can disable this rule.

Further Reading

Version

This rule was introduced in ESLint 0.8.0.

Resources