Sublime Text Empty Key error when inserting a snippet

04 November, 2013 by Tom Elliott

Sublime Text snippets, like with any good code editor, are one of the most powerful features that can help any coder become more efficient.

I haven’t seen many snippet based errors, but if you are getting the ‘Error when parsing content for snippet [snippet] Empty Key’ error as below, chances are you are trying to insert a snippet using the $ symbol.

Sublime empty key error

To fix this, you should escape any ‘$’ symbols with a backslash. This is because sublime snippets use the dollar symbol to denote where tabbed cursor points should appear.

For example, the below jQuery snippet should be:

<snippet>
	<content><![CDATA[
$(document).ready(function(){
	$1
});
]]></content>
	<tabTrigger>jsready</tabTrigger>
</snippet>