Re: Deprecate and remove case-insensitive constants?

> By itself this change provides little value. If it was done in > connection with other features such as merging symbol tables then we > can actually gain some significant improvements: > > array_map(sum2, $input1, $input2); > > Currently that requires sum2 to be a constant. To get the > correct > behavior we currently need to do: > > array_map('fully\qualified\namespace\sum2', $input1, $input2); After rewriting my reply I noticed this sentence doesn't quite make sense: > This is not just convenience; it provides safety to refactoring and > general code analysis tools. Instead I meant that using the string is not just inconvenient; it also prevents fully-safe code refactoring and analysis. > Maintenance is a crucial aspect of large > code bases and being able to move away from stringly-typed things is a > significant improvement. It's also a step towards general autoloading > instead of just class/trait/interface autoloading; however this would > require further changes. > > I believe these improvements would be worth it and do understand it is > a large backwards compatibility break. Given sufficient time and > tooling to prepare I think PHP would be markedly better in the > long-run for these two changes. However, if we change only the case > sensitivity of constants we gain little value for our BC break.