Feature request - warn of empty while() loop

[wturrell]

i.e. warn you if you've left a while conditional that contains no statements in your code, because it will execute forever.

[aik099]

Not sure, but maybe there is a sniff, that checks for while ( true ) { ... } constructs, aka infinite loops. I guess it can be adapted to handle empty condition case as well.

[aik099]

Ups. I've mistaken it with Generic.CodeAnalysis.UnconditionalIfStatement sniff, that checked that IF/ELSEIF had only true or false in their condition.

Having sniff to detect infinite loops can be useful.

[h3xx]

i.e. warn you if you've left a while conditional that contains no statements in your code, because it will execute forever.

I'm not sure what you mean by "while conditional that contains no statements."

If you mean this:

<?php
while () {
}

That's not valid PHP code:

PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected ')' in /home/dchurch/qq.php on line 3

[wturrell]

I meant:

<?php
while ($foo == 'bar') {
}

The scenario was I'd got as far as writing that much of the while, got distracted by something else and switched away from my IDE (which auto-saved the file in the meantime), and then spent a few minutes wondering why all the pages on my development server were timing out…

[aik099]

Sure. Better to detect that issue early during CS checking phase, because once you've got infinite page loading it's hard to detect what causes it.

[gsherwood]

Try including the sniff Generic.CodeAnalysis.EmptyStatement. For this specific code, you get this:

$ phpcs temp.php --standard=Generic --sniffs=Generic.CodeAnalysis.EmptyStatement

FILE: temp.php
----------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 1 ERROR AFFECTING 1 LINE
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 2 | ERROR | Empty WHILE statement detected
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Time: 15ms; Memory: 2.25Mb

It also checks a bunch of other code blocks like IF, ELSE, FOR, FOREACH etc.

Is that what you're after?

[gsherwood]

If this sniff doesn't do what you are after, please comment and I'll reopen.