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Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2025 19:17:16 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Deprecate Undefined Constant Usage in php.ini Files
 (GH-20060)
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From: imsop.php@rwec.co.uk ("Rowan Tommins [IMSoP]")

On 20/10/2025 10:16, Hans Krentel wrote:
> So, there would indeed be a change compared to my earlier answer: I now
> propose using only uppercase names for constant resolution (and thus for
> the warning you asked about). This would mean:
>
> - Allowing unquoted strings with lowercase characters to pass through
>    unchanged.
>
> - Restricting constant name resolution to a pattern like:
>
>      CONSTANT_NAME [A-Z_][A-Z0-9_]*
>
>    ...possibly with a minimum length greater than one, as shown.


I don't think this kind of pattern matching is the right way to go. It's 
perfectly normal in INI files to have all sorts of strings which aren't 
quoted; looking through the samples provided in the source, I spotted this:

user_agent=PHP

No regex is going to recognise that that should be interpreted as "PHP", 
not constant("PHP").


As I think I mentioned in an earlier message, the specific problem 
raised seems to be more to do with string-to-int conversion, rather than 
the INI parsing itself. Even if the invalid constant is surrounded by 
quotes, this is not a useful setting:

error_reporting = "X_ERROR"|E_WARNING|E_PARSE|E_NOTICE

Maybe the part of the parser that handles *operators* is what needs a 
behaviour change instead?


-- 
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]