Option to keep redundant parentheses

[theriault]

I know this goes against a true AST, but could there be an option to keep redundant parentheses?

Something similar to https://clang.llvm.org/doxygen/classclang_1_1ParenExpr.html#details

[nikic]

I'm generally open to the idea -- what do you want to use this for?

[theriault]

@nikic I am working on an automated refactor of a legacy codebase where files contain a mix of functions and side-effects. Each file will become a class of static functions, where the side-effects will become the body of a "catchall" static function and the other functions becoming a part of the class; rescoping all the code.

Preserving the existing spacing/comments while simultaneously indenting/relocating large chunks of code is not working well with the existing preservation feature of PrettyPrinter, so I am working on a before/after comment/spacing consumer NodeVisitor and a special PrettyPrinter that then utilizes the before/after attributes, so that I can move chunks of code around more easily without worrying too much about the source comments/spacing getting mangled/lost as each Node can define surrounding spacing/comments (and if those attributes aren't defined, the default formatting kicks in). Each comment/spacing token will be flagged as being owned by only one node for existing code.

To do this, I need to try to maintain location information of redundant parentheses and such so that surrounding comments/spacing can be demarcated/consumed by what may ultimately be redundant parentheses, e.g.

if (
     (/*some condition*/) // some comment around this condition 
     || (/* some other condition */) // some comment around this other condition
) {
   //...
}

Ideally, all parenthesized and braced chunks of code could be captured, so even if a dev did some outlandish style like the following, it could be captured.

$something = 123;

// commenting/grouping a chunk of code
{
       // code within its own redundant block
}

// commenting/grouping another chunk of code
{
       // code within its own redundant block
}

However, this PR in its current state only handles redundant parentheses as I haven't seen the above style too much outside of intermediary refactors of code or code that required an anonymous scope (which PHP doesn't support).