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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Undefined constants producing E_NOTICE
From: sv_forums@fmethod.com ("Stan Vassilev | FM")

> Hi Kuba,
>
>> For the moment some unexpected behaviour caused by use of undefined 
>> constant may be hard to fix with low error reporting level.
>
> So don't use a low error reporting level.
>
> Moreover,
>> treating an undefined constant as a string does not make sense. I know 
>> that PHP is intended to be a flexible language, but for me it's a bit 
>> thick.
>
> Just how is PHP supposed to know that some random string is intended to be 
> anything else?

By the quotes :).

Undefined variable $foo doesn't fall back to string 'foo' it falls back to 
null. It's a sane strategy for constants as well.

I have no information how people "rely" on this, I know the reason for this 
fallback is bad syntax like:  echo $hi[there];

I'd fix it in 6.0 though.

Regards, Stan Vassiev