Useless 0h24v24H0V0z path?

[paulirish]

My typical SVG workflow is taking icons from material icons, sending them through svgomg, and then inlining them into my css.

One little bit of SVG I see in all these icons (and I think I also see in all illustrator-sourced svgs..) is this element:

<path d="M0 0h24v24H0V0z" fill="none"/>

I don't speak path, so I don't know what it does. But I do know that whenever I've removed it over the past few years, everything is fine.

Can anyone that knows path syntax explain its purpose?
And it is indeed useless, then perhaps svgo and svgomg could strip it?

[jakearchibald]

It draws 24x24 box, but since it has no fill, there's nothing to render.

I don't know why material icons have this, but I've seen it too.

@TrySound I guess the answer is a plugin that removes paths that don't have a fill or stroke?

[Windowsfreak]

I believe that it is used by some design software to ensure the viewport doesn't accidentally get changed, by drawing an invisible rectangle covering it. As SVGOMG also removes the viewport by default, you should test thoroughly if removing both of it breaks your downline applications.