Are CSS selectors without properties of any effect?

Question

I got a maintenance job and there is a huge CSS file, in which I found a lot of things like the following:

.xxxx {}

That is, a selector with absolutely nothing in it. I think they are useless, but there are so many of them I start to doubt myself. Am I right that they can be removed safely? Or they actually are doing something and I should keep them?

Answer 1

I'd say it's probably the worst design in history (or a stronger contender to the title...) but it could be used.

See below:

document.styleSheets[0].cssRules[0].style.setProperty('color', 'red');

.randomClass {}

<div class="randomClass">No styling?</div>

You can acces, process, and even modify stylesheets. Even if a selector is empty of styles, that can be modified using code.

So, it's probably very safe to remove, but if you want to be 100% certain, either leave it there, or go through all possible code branches.