Due to PHPs dynamic typing, unquoted strings are treated as strings
unless a constant by that name exists. Thankfully it's clever enough to
raise a notice to tell you it couldn't find a constant by that name,
which makes debugging much easier.
The reason constant() throws a warning rather than a notice is because
PHP knows you're looking for a constant by that name and flags it as a
more serious error, wheras before, it could just be that you want to use
an unquoted string :)
If you think it's a bit strange, it may seem so, but logically, if an
unquoted number is equivilent to it's quoted counter-part, the same must
be true for strings.
Nicholas Telford
Jochem Maas wrote:
Derick Rethans wrote:
echo constant('CNST');
when:
echo CNST;
only triggers an E_NOTICE.
(assuming, in both cases that CNST is not defined).
IMHO it should at most trigger an E_NOTICE.
Did you compare the output of the two statements?
I did.
echo constant('CNST');
shows nothing (except the warning)
echo CNST;
shows "CNST" (and a notice).
This makes perfect sense to me to differentiate between them like this.
ok - agreed that the echo behaviour is logical - but I wasn't actually
pertaining to the echo behaviour (and what was being echo'ed wasn't
relevant to my
original question).
my point is that using a constant directly in your code when that
constant doesn't exist
only causes an E_NOTICE but passing a string to constant() when a
constant of the given
name doesn't exist causes an E_WARNING.
I would either expect both to cause the same level of error OR that
trying to
use an undefined constant directly in code would cause a lower level of
error.
but if you say the error output behaviour is expected/correct/desired
then I'm
happy to except it (and adjust my expectations accordingly)
- if you (anyone) could explain why (because I don't grok the logic behind
this behaviour) I would be very grateful, maybe it will bring me one
step closer
to being able to call myself a real programmer. :-/
anyway thanks for taking the time to reply,
I gather that you, Derick (amongst others!), have a plate full of PHP work
in the form of unicode and date related stuff (which I am very much looking
forward to!) - i.e. you are busy-busy, time is short, etc etc.
kind rgds,
Jochem
Derick