I find using the concatenation operator helps disambiguate value assignments with constants. For example, setting constants in a global configuration file:
<?php
define('LOCATOR', "/locator");
define('CLASSES', LOCATOR."/code/classes");
define('FUNCTIONS', LOCATOR."/code/functions");
define('USERDIR', LOCATOR."/user");
?>
Later, I can use the same convention when invoking a constant's value for static constructs such as require() calls:
<?php
require_once(FUNCTIONS."/database.fnc");
require_once(FUNCTIONS."/randchar.fnc");
?>
as well as dynamic constructs, typical of value assignment to variables:
<?php
$userid = randchar(8,'anc','u');
$usermap = USERDIR."/".$userid.".png";
?>
The above convention works for me, and helps produce self-documenting code.
-- Erich
