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Black vs PHP CS Fixer

Black

black.readthedocs.io

PHP CS Fixer

cs.symfony.com

Side by side

FigureBlackPHP CS Fixer
Price fromFreeFree
Free planYesYes
Free trial——
Open source——
WindowsYes—
macOSYes—
LinuxYesYes
Self-hostedYesYes
Plans published11
Spec score · Code Formatting Tools8.7 (#1)7.5 (#25)
Spec score · Code formatters8.7 (#1)7.5 (#12)
Editor supportDocumented editor integrations include Emacs, PyCharm and IntelliJ IDEA, Vim, Neovim, Visual Studio Code, SublimeText, and others.The site lists native PhpStorm support and dedicated plugins for NetBeans, Sublime Text, Vim, and VS Code.
InstallationBlack installs with pip or pipx and requires Python 3.10 or later to run.The project recommends installing PHP CS Fixer as a Composer development dependency, and also documents Docker, PHIVE, Homebrew, and PHAR installation.
IntegrationsThe documentation lists editor and IDE, GitHub Actions, source version control, and doctest formatting integrations.The documentation provides CI examples for GitHub Actions and GitLab CI, and describes GitLab Code Quality output.
LicenseBlack is licensed under the MIT license.The project is released under the MIT license.
PurposeBlack is an opinionated formatter for Python code that follows PEP 8.PHP CS Fixer detects PHP coding standards problems and fixes them automatically.

Plans

Black

  • BlackFree

Black pricing →

PHP CS Fixer

  • PHP CS FixerFree

PHP CS Fixer pricing →

In their own words

Black

Black is a free, MIT-licensed formatter for Python code that follows PEP 8. It reformats whole files in place and uses a default line length of 88 characters. Its limited style choices are intended to keep code consistent across projects; indentation style cannot be configured. After formatting, Black checks whether the abstract syntax tree remains effectively equivalent and raises an error if the check fails. Install it with pip; it requires Python 3.10 or newer. The documentation lists editor integrations including Emacs, PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA, Vim, Neovim, Visual Studio Code and Sublime Text, as well as GitHub Actions and doctest workflows. Notebook formatting is available with the jupyter extra, though Black skips cells containing certain magics or invalid syntax. It also includes blackd, an HTTP server that binds to localhost by default. Black is primarily a command-line tool and does not provide a Python interface. Stable releases preserve formatting within the same calendar year when the options match.

Visit black.readthedocs.io

PHP CS Fixer

PHP CS Fixer has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

Visit cs.symfony.com