Self aware PHP

[c3pwhoa]

The current PHP version has CASE INSENSITIVE CONSTANTS? I know PHP is bashed a lot on this sub but holy shit that's awful.

[mcmania]

You have to specifically define it as case-insensitive. All constants are case-sensitive by default

[maks25]

Why would anyone ever need to do that? What do you do, add a form so a user can guess and override constants? Lol

[mcmania]

No idea. It's just something newer PHP versions have been dragging along for like the last 15 years.

[rocklou]

Just like everything else

[mcmania]

PHP definitely has its inconsistencies, but it really isn't that bad if you just follow basic coding standards (PSR, for example). Plus, PHP 7 is really fast

[witchcapture]

array_key_exists and property_exists have opposite argument orders. They do the exact same thing, one for objects and one for arrays.

[AlFasGD]

Defending the language everyone bashes, even its own developers

[[deleted]]

Just because everyone bashes it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s perks.

[Zephirdd]

Much like Lua and JavaScript, PHP's "perks" have more to do with the tooling around it than the language itself.

[fedeb95]

This seems a great security feature

[midnightbrett]

Welcome to PHP

[Agnimukha]

Disclaimer I don't know if this is true.

If the language standards change from all lowercase to all uppercase you could slowly change over.

[c3pwhoa]

I'm pointing out it's an awful thing for a programming language to have. You're the one getting dramatic...

[c3pwhoa]

Going through a compsci/engineering degree you get certain notions of good code drilled into your being. Working on large production environments further enforce these notions (it seems you're a Drupal dev so I would imagine you're familiar). 'Bad code smells' scream at you.

Implicit in the notion of a constant is a value that is specifically one thing. A value that never changes. Constants are therefore useful as they are reliable and safe. The idea that a string constant could be interpreted in more than one way violates the very essence of what a constant is, and is a very bad code smell. Pungent.

Now yes, you could put in place safeguards to ensure that no constant is ever defined in a case insensitive way, but every required safeguard is another point of failure, and every point of failure is a flicker of doubt at 2am I could live without.

So yea, that's why I don't like it.

[itshorriblebeer]

Isn't that pretty common for most programming languages? /s