DOC: ExtensionDtype.empty is not in the API reference #71766

Pandas version checks

• I have checked that the issue still exists on the latest versions of the docs on main here

Location of the documentation

https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/reference/api/pandas.api.extensions.ExtensionDtype.html (source: doc/source/reference/extensions.rst)
https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/development/extending.html

Documentation problem

Facts collected by an AI agent (quoted verbatim):

ExtensionDtype.empty(self, shape) in pandas/core/dtypes/base.py has no leading underscore and has a docstring ("Construct an ExtensionArray of this dtype with the given shape. Analogous to numpy.empty."). It was added in #45024. The API reference lists construct_array_type, construct_from_string, is_dtype, kind, name, names, na_value and type for ExtensionDtype, but not empty, and the extending guide does not mention it. pandas-stubs only covers the public API, so pandas-dev/pandas-stubs#2034, which fixes the stub of this method, is waiting for this.

import pandas as pd  # 3.1.0
print(type(pd.Int64Dtype().empty(3)).__name__)        # IntegerArray
print(type(pd.StringDtype().empty(2)).__name__)       # StringArray
print(type(pd.CategoricalDtype().empty(2)).__name__)  # Categorical

Suggested fix for documentation

If this method is part of the public API, please add it to the documentation. If it is internal, please let us know.

AI disclosure: I used Claude Code (Claude Opus 5.5, effort: xhigh) to collect the facts quoted above and to run the snippet; the quoted text and the code block are its output. I wrote this request in Korean and the same tool translated it into English