Command-line script to convert PHP's array() syntax to PHP 5.4's short array syntax [] using PHP's built-in tokenizer.
By relying on the PHP tokenizer, nothing but the array syntax itself will be altered. The script was successfully tested against code bases with more than 5.000 PHP files.
Just add "thomasbachem/php-short-array-syntax-converter": "dev-master" to your require(-dev) section and run update command on Composer.
Usage: php array-converter.php [-w] <file>
Run the script with the path of the PHP file you wish to convert as argument. This will print the converted source code to STDOUT.
You can add the -w switch if you want to override the original file with the converted code.
In case of any error, an error message is written to STDERR and the script exits with a return code of 1.
Use find to convert a whole directory recursively:
find <directory> -name "*.php" -exec php "array-converter.php" -w "{}" \;
In case you don't trust the script yet, you can even perform a syntax check after conversion:
find <directory> -name "*.php" -exec php -l "{}" \; | grep "error:"
Thanks to Lebenslauf.com (German CV editor) for sponsoring the development.