Long ago I was told constants could only be scalars, so I accepted it.
Certainly ZEND_FUNCTION(define) does the check to ensure it's a scalar, but
why?
For what I can tell a zend_constant is just a container for an ordinary zval
which is refcounted and all that fun stuff. I don't see any obvious reason
for this restriction, and my tests with those restrictions removed seem safe
enough so far... Can someone spell it out for me with little words?
-Sara
At 09:16 PM 5/7/2004 -0700, Sara Golemon wrote:
Long ago I was told constants could only be scalars, so I accepted it.
Certainly ZEND_FUNCTION(define) does the check to ensure it's a scalar, but
why?For what I can tell a zend_constant is just a container for an ordinary zval
which is refcounted and all that fun stuff. I don't see any obvious reason
for this restriction, and my tests with those restrictions removed seem safe
enough so far... Can someone spell it out for me with little words?
I don't remember all of the reasons, but the main reason is that it just
makes sense (IMO). I think constant values should be easily seen when
reading through source code. Having to read logic to see what values are in
the constants doesn't make much sense to me. I'd use variables for that.
If we start talking about class constants then it's obviously even more
important for them to be constants. You can't evaluate values during the
class definition as you don't have variables defined yet. I wouldn't want
define() to behave different from const.
Andi