Re: Proposal: Raise severity of undefined constants

Ferenc Kovacs wrote on 28/01/2015 12:13:

    E_DEPRECATED is likely to be even more ignored than E_NOTICE, so
    would be a step backwards; my whole assumption is that most people
    getting the message are not using a deprecated feature, but
    accidentally mis-typing a constant or keyword. I'd be happy with
    raising it to E_WARNING to make it more noticeable, though, if we
    don't think removing the functionality is acceptable.

turn it into E_WARNING if we are planning to keep the feature, turn it into E_DEPRECATED if we want to remove the feature later on.

I see absolutely no advantage in changing this into E_DEPRECATED, as it's even more likely to be hidden or ignored than E_NOTICE. There are actually two parts to the message: that you used an undefined constant, and that PHP interpreted this as you wanting a string. If you really intended a string, then "deprecated" is relevant; but if you intended a keyword or constant, then there is nothing to deprecate, it's just an error. If we want to keep the string fallback for now, how about we raise the severity to E_WARNING, and change the message to mention deprecation? e.g. Warning: Use of undefined constant foo - assumed 'foo', but this behaviour will change in a future version Regards, -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP]