Re: Class constants on object references have variable-inconsistent accessibility

Hi Jakub, Jakub Kubíček wrote:

I have encountered an inconsistence, or rather a bug, in PHP's syntax. The thing is, in PHP you can access constants defined on a class using reference to an instance of this class, stored in variable. So we have a code: <?php class B {

     const C = 4;

} $b = new B; var_dump($b::C === B::C); // bool(true) ?> Which will nicely pass. But things will go wrong having a code trying to access the same constant on an object of B stored in member variable of class A -- let's see below: <?php class A {

     /** @var B */
     public $b;

} $a = new A; $a->b = new B; var_dump($a->b::C === B::C); // Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '::' (T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM) in... ?> Let me conclude that if there's access to class' constant using a reference to an instance of the class, it should be possible with any type of value-holder (so-called variable).

Which versions of PHP have you tried? The following works in PHP 7: <?php class B {

     const C = 4;

} class A {

    /** @var B */
    public $b;

} $a = new A; $a->b = new B; var_dump($a->b::C === B::C); ?> It outputs: bool(true) PHP 7 dealt with a lot of issues like these with the Uniform Variable Syntax RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/uniform_variable_syntax Unfortunately, if you want that code to work, you'll have to upgrade to PHP 7, because there's no plans for another 5.x release, and this isn't a simple bug fix. Thanks. -- Andrea Faulds https://ajf.me/