defined() not working

A while back I dropped a note about how to check if a constant was defined. I was referred to the defined() function. I finally got around to making some changes in the header files and found that if (defined( SOME_CONSTANT )) works regardless of whether or not I've used define( "SOME_CONSTANT", 1 ); So I have reverted all of my code to use if (1 == SOME_CONSTANT) I wish this function worked as it is documented. I further wish that a const variable could be used. <sigh>