Introduction
============
-This project is a PHP 5.2 to PHP 7.1 parser **written in PHP itself**.
+This project is a PHP 5.2 to PHP 7.2 parser **written in PHP itself**.
What is this for?
-----------------
token stream generated by [`token_get_all`][2]. The token stream is much more low level than
the AST and thus has different applications: It allows to also analyze the exact formatting of
a file. On the other hand the token stream is much harder to deal with for more complex analysis.
-For example an AST abstracts away the fact that in PHP variables can be written as `$foo`, but also
+For example, an AST abstracts away the fact that, in PHP, variables can be written as `$foo`, but also
as `$$bar`, `${'foobar'}` or even `${!${''}=barfoo()}`. You don't have to worry about recognizing
all the different syntaxes from a stream of tokens.
What can it parse?
------------------
-The parser supports parsing PHP 5.2-5.6 and PHP 7.
+The parser supports parsing PHP 5.2-7.2.
As the parser is based on the tokens returned by `token_get_all` (which is only able to lex the PHP
version it runs on), additionally a wrapper for emulating tokens from newer versions is provided.
-This allows to parse PHP 7.1 source code running on PHP 5.5, for example. This emulation is somewhat
+This allows to parse PHP 7.2 source code running on PHP 5.5, for example. This emulation is somewhat
hacky and not perfect, but it should work well on any sane code.
What output does it produce?
----------------------------
-The parser produces an [Abstract Syntax Tree][1] (AST) also known as a node tree. How this looks like
+The parser produces an [Abstract Syntax Tree][1] (AST) also known as a node tree. How this looks
can best be seen in an example. The program `<?php echo 'Hi', 'World';` will give you a node tree
roughly looking like this:
* Support for pretty printing, which is the act of converting an AST into PHP code. Please note
that "pretty printing" does not imply that the output is especially pretty. It's just how it's
called ;)
- * Support for serializing and unserializing the node tree to XML
+ * Support for serializing and unserializing the node tree to JSON
* Support for dumping the node tree in a human readable form (see the section above for an
example of how the output looks like)
* Infrastructure for traversing and changing the AST (node traverser and node visitors)