Difference between "space" and "whitespace" in PSR-2

[Greg Sherwood]

Hi all,

The most recent version of PHP_CodeSniffer (2.2) contained a change to properly enforce and fix "There MUST NOT be a space after the opening parenthesis" [1] for PSR-2 control structures.

I've had someone question this change [2] because there is confusion over the term "space" and if that rule also bans newlines after the opening parenthesis. PHP_CodeSniffer currently catches both spaces and newlines and treats them the same way.

This is made a bit more unclear to me due to the example code provided in PSR-2, specifically for an IF statement in this case [3], and comments made on some PSR-2 issues [4] [5].

Obviously, this code is valid:

1: if ($expr1 && $expr1) {

2: }

Although PSR-2 doesn't specifically mention multi-line IF statements, this also follows all the rules:

1: if ($expr1

2:     && $expr1) {

3:     echo 'foo';

4: }

But this technically might not be valid, because there is a newline before the closing parenthesis, although this is how I see most people writing multi-line IFs:

1: if ($expr1

2:     && $expr1

3: ) {

4:     echo 'foo';

5: }

If we assume that the newline is not actually a space, then this can also be valid (which is the original query):

1: if (

2:     $expr1

3:     && $expr1

4: ) {

5:     echo 'foo';

6: }

But then is this also valid code?:

1: if (

2:

3:     $expr1

4:     && $expr1

5:

6: ) {

7:     echo 'foo';

8: }

Sorry for all the example code, but the question ends up boiling down to: Throughout PSR-2, does the word "space" mean a single space character or does it include any whitespace (e.g., space, tab, newline)?

Thanks

Greg

[1] https://github.com/php-fig/fig-standards/blob/master/accepted/PSR-2-coding-style-guide.md#5-control-structures

[2] https://github.com/squizlabs/PHP_CodeSniffer/issues/460

[3] https://github.com/php-fig/fig-standards/blob/master/accepted/PSR-2-coding-style-guide.md#51-if-elseif-else

[4] https://github.com/php-fig/fig-standards/issues/181

[5] https://github.com/php-fig/fig-standards/issues/261