Chalk this up as par for the course in the world of PHP, but it doesn't behave as documented. I noticed today that @ work someone is creating database connections, then define()ing the result into a constant. I presumed this was failing silently and because we were generally connecting to only one database (or so I thought initially) that it was simply using the last open connection and still working.

This does *not* throw an error, but does in fact work. Even going back to PHP 4.3.2 (earliest I've checked). This flies in the face of my understanding of constants for years - well, since 1998 (perhaps earlier) or so.

the issue - that a resource can be assigned to a constant - seems to contradict what's listed in the manual, and he asks later if there are others out there that have seen this same issue...