On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 3:12 PM, Ashley Sheridan wrote: > On 19 April 2010 14:24, Gary wrote: > > Okay. Why not? ... > Class constants must be defined with static values, not variables. They are constants after all! If they relied on the value of a variable, surely that would mean that their own value might change, so they would just become regular variables not constants. Right. But in fact the only referenced values are *also* constant (unless I'm completely misunderstanding the use of 'const'), so I think it's a valid thing to want to do. I accept it doesn't seem to be possible, I'm now curious as to the thinking behind it. > Is there a specific reason that you need to try and achieve this? Okay, well here's a more meaningful situation, perhaps: class SomeTable { const TABLE_NAME = 'mytable'; const SELECT = 'SELECT * FROM ' . MyTable::TABLE_NAME; const INSERT = 'INSERT INTO ' . MyTable::TABLE_NAME ... If the table name should change for some reason, it is preferable to make the change in one place in the code (i.e. the value of TABLE_NAME), surely, than changing the name in the alternative, which is something like: class SomeTable { // const TABLE_NAME = 'mytable'; const SELECT = 'SELECT * FROM mytable'; const INSERT = 'INSERT INTO mytable... -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php