Re: Proposal for 2 new magic constants

On 23/05/2026 6:38 pm, php@s22.us wrote:

I would like to propose two new magic constants to PHP: __HOME__ and __USER__

I strongly oppose this idea. This kind of information is environment-specific and does not really belong as a language-level magic constant. Existing magic constants describe source context (__FILE__, __DIR__, etc.), not host or user environment details. For CLI usage, this information is usually already available through environment variables such as HOME and USER, which is the more appropriate place for this kind of information. In isolated environments such as containers or chroots, exposing user or home-directory information is also something we generally should avoid. More importantly, I think we should discourage PHP web applications from reaching into other parts of the system and instead encourage them to stay within their application/web directories.

P.S.  Hopefully I'm posting this to the correct list.  If not, please point me to where I need to be.

This is the correct list. Often before starting an official RFC an e-mail is sent to this mailing list to see if a certain topic/idea has interest. -- Regards, Jordi Kroon