Python 3 - Second Edition

5.3    The pass Statement

During the development of a program, it can happen that at a certain point in time, a control structure is only partially implemented. The programmer creates a statement header but doesn’t add a statement body because they may want to take care of other, more important things first. However, a statement header hanging in the air without a corresponding body is a syntax error.

For this purpose, you can use the pass statement—a statement that does nothing at all. It can be applied as follows:

if x == 1:     passelif x == 2:     print("x has value 2")  

In this case, only pass is found in the body of the if statement. Thus, if x has the value 1, nothing’s going to happen.

The purpose of the pass statement is to avoid syntax errors ...