Question

In C#, variables and other things can be named protected names such as “class” by prepending the name with an @ sign. So, @class is a valid name. Is it possible to do this same thing in PHP? I am using a class of constants to simulate an enum for HTML attributes such as ID, and Class. For now I am using “CssClass” but I’d rather use the name Class somehow.

Answer 1

Nope, not possible, at least not for class constants.

You cannot use any of the following [reserved] words as constants, class names, function or method names.

I don’t know about C#, but there isn’t any special symbol in PHP to transform a keyword into an identifier. As long as you don’t name it exactly the same as a keyword (barring letter case), it’ll just be any normal constant name.

How about a (different since it’s not just CSS) prefix? Gets repetitive to type, but is a nice workaround. I realize this may be redundant as well if your class is named something like HTMLAttribute, but it’s the easiest way out.

const A_ID = 'id';
const A_CLASS = 'class';
// etc