redirect with empty string causes infinite loop

[mbranch]

Link to the code that reproduces this issue

https://github.com/mbranch/next.js-redirect-bug

To Reproduce

// page.tsx
import { redirect } from "next/navigation";

export default function Home() {
	redirect("");
}

# Browser response headers
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Vary: RSC, Next-Router-State-Tree, Next-Router-Prefetch, Next-Router-Segment-Prefetch, Accept-Encoding
Cache-Control: no-store, must-revalidate
Content-Type: text/x-component
Content-Encoding: gzip
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2025 22:18:40 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
Keep-Alive: timeout=5
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

# curl response headers
HTTP/1.1 307 Temporary Redirect
Vary: RSC, Next-Router-State-Tree, Next-Router-Prefetch, Next-Router-Segment-Prefetch, Accept-Encoding
link: </_next/static/media/gyByhwUxId8gMEwcGFWNOITd-s.p.da1ebef7.woff2>; rel=preload; as="font"; crossorigin=""; type="font/woff2", </_next/static/media/or3nQ6H_1_WfwkMZI_qYFrcdmhHkjko-s.p.be19f591.woff2>; rel=preload; as="font"; crossorigin=""; type="font/woff2"
location: 
Cache-Control: no-store, must-revalidate
X-Powered-By: Next.js
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2025 22:15:21 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
Keep-Alive: timeout=5

Current vs. Expected behavior

While this example is contrived, what's surprising about the behavior is that Next.js gets into an infinite loop, but only when making the request with a browser.

This suggests to me that the client-side router is misbehaving when the redirect response's location header is empty (notable in the browser response headers above). It should probably attempt to detect redirect loops like modern browsers do.

Expected behavior:

• redirect("") should maybe throw an error?
• The client-side router should detect simple redirect loops like this.

Provide environment information

Operating System:
  Platform: darwin
  Arch: arm64
  Version: Darwin Kernel Version 24.3.0: Thu Jan  2 20:24:23 PST 2025; root:xnu-11215.81.4~3/RELEASE_ARM64_T6020
  Available memory (MB): 65536
  Available CPU cores: 12
Binaries:
  Node: 23.3.0
  npm: 10.9.0
  Yarn: 1.22.22
  pnpm: 10.2.0
Relevant Packages:
  next: 15.2.4 // Latest available version is detected (15.2.4).
  eslint-config-next: N/A
  react: 19.1.0
  react-dom: 19.1.0
  typescript: 5.8.2
Next.js Config:
  output: N/A

Which area(s) are affected? (Select all that apply)

Redirects

Which stage(s) are affected? (Select all that apply)

next dev (local), next start (local), next build (local)

Additional context

I tested on v15.2.4, and v15.1.7.

[petejodo]

This impacts redirects in next.config.js as well. If using the config below and then visiting /beta, an infinite loop occurs. Confirmed Location header in the 308 response is an empty string which seems like the same issue as this

module.exports = {
  // ...

  async redirects() {
    return [
      {
        source: "/beta/:path*",
        destination: "/:path*",
        permanent: true,
      },
    ];
  },

  // ...
}