vertical alignment of function/method arguments with default assignments

[JohnRDOrazio]

I have added the <rule ref="Generic.Formatting.MultipleStatementAlignment"/> sniff to my phpcs.xml, and it's working for multiple adjacent assignments, except for within a function / method declaration.

When a function / method takes a large number of arguments, it can make for more readable code to split the arguments each on their own line. If these arguments are also assigned default values, it can be aesthetically pleasing to see these assignments also vertically aligned:

    public function __construct(
        array $one  ~= [],
        array $two  ~= [],
        array $three = [],
        array $four ~= [],
        array $five ~= [],
        array $six  ~= [],
        array $seven = [],
        array $eight = []
    ) {
        $this->one   = $one;
        $this->two   = $two;
        $this->three = $three;
        $this->four  = $four;
        $this->five  = $five;
        $this->six   = $six;
        $this->seven = $seven;
        $this->eight = $eight;
    }

In the example above, I added a tilde to represent the red squiggly line giving the sniff error Incorrect spacing between argument "$one" and equals sign; expected 1 but found 3 (Squiz.Functions.FunctionDeclarationArgumentSpacing.SpaceBeforeEquals).

It seems that the Generic.Formatting.MultipleStatementAlignment sniff simply doesn't work for function argument assignments on multiple lines, because I tried disabling completely the Squiz.Functions.FunctionDeclarationArgumentSpacing.SpaceBeforeEquals sniff, but even with that disabled the Generic.Formatting.MultipleStatementAlignment sniff doesn't kick in when the assignments are not vertically aligned.

So perhaps this could be a feature request, to allow Generic.Formatting.MultipleStatementAlignment to work also for function arguments that are split across multiple lines. I'm not sure if or how that would interfere with the Squiz.Functions.FunctionDeclarationArgumentSpacing.SpaceBeforeEquals, which would perhaps also need to be able to be customized to ignoreMultiline, so that the two sniffs don't compete.

Or is there another solution that anyone could suggest for this use case?