Rule - MD042#
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Aliases | md042, no-empty-links |
| Autofix Available | No |
| Enabled By Default | Yes |
Summary#
No empty links.
Reasoning#
Correctness#
Both normal links and image links present a URI that decides what they link to. If the URI that they refer to is not present, then link is going against its very nature.
In addition, during the creation of documents, authors may often leave the links blank to remind themselves to find and insert the correct URI later in the creative process. This rule also helps enforce that practice.
Examples#
Failure Scenarios#
This rule triggers when the link is empty and has no characters or only whitespace characters:
Markdown
[empty link]()
This rule also triggers on URI fragments that are also similarly empty:
Markdown
Correct Scenarios#
This rule does not trigger if any non-whitespace text is present within the URI part of the link:
Markdown
[link](a)
Note that the link is not checked to see if it is validly formed or present, just that at least one non-whitespace character is present.
Similarly, this rule does not trigger if any non-whitespace text is
present after the leading hash character (#) for the URI:
Markdown
Fix Description#
The reason for not being able to auto-fix this rule is context. Without context provided by the author, adding the proper link destination to the link is almost impossible.
Configuration#
| Prefixes |
|---|
plugins.md042. |
plugins.no-empty-links. |
| Value Name | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
enabled |
boolean |
True |
Whether the Rule Plugin is enabled. |
Origination of Rule#
This rule is largely inspired by the MarkdownLint rule MD042.
Differences From MarkdownLint Rule#
The difference between this rule and the original rule is that the original rule only fired on links, not image links. As the only difference between a link:
Markdown
[fragment](#in-same-document)
and an image:
Markdown
is the ! character, it made sense for the implementation to respect both elements.