PHP Hound

An opinionated PHP issue sniffer written in Rust.

Usage

Run with the path to your PHP files:

cargo run -- -p examples

You can optionally ignore paths:

cargo run -- --path examples --ignore examples/vendor --ignore examples/tests

Scans for

Possible accidental assignment

Checks if and elseif for accidential assignment ($a = $b rather than $a == $b)

While it is not technically wrong to use something like if ($a = function()) {} to determine if a function returns false or NULL, this is side-effect programming and can lead to a confusing codebase.

Incrementing and decrementing variables inside conditions

Checks if and elseif for incrementing or decrementing variables.

A case of side-effect programming, changing variables inside conditions can be confusing.

Use of the eval() function

Using eval() is a security risk, allowing possible remote code execution.

Use of the var_dump() function

This usually means some debug code has been left in the codebase.