there is no type juggling for constants (I want my string 'REGEX_NAME' like 'REGEX_EMAIL' to become REGEX_NAME like REGEX_EMAIL)

Question

I'm having to manually write:

if($pattern == 'REGEX_EMAIL') $pattern = REGEX_EMAIL;
if($pattern == 'REGEX_PASSWORD') $pattern = REGEX_PASSWORD;

Is there an other way?

Answer 1

You could use the constant function to get the constant’s value by its name:

if (substr($pattern, 0, 6) == 'REGEX_' && defined($pattern)) {
    $pattern = constant($pattern);
}

Answer 2

One solution (albeit ridiculous) would be to use an associative array...

$regexs = array('REGEX_NAME' => REGEX_NAME, 'REGEX_EMAIL' => REGEX_EMAIL);