I don't know what you mean here, can you clarify?

I believe that the users wants to be able to see the values of any constants that are defined.

For example, if I make the following define:

define('MY_CONSTANT','xyz');

It would be good to be able to retrieve the value of MY_CONSTANT through Xdebug. As far as I know, this is not currently possible (i.e. not support by "context_get", "property_get", etc...).

Yes, that's exactly what I meant.

-- hugh

I agree it would be great - is it possible with PHP though?

It should be possible, but I don't know enough about PHP internals to see exactly how to do it.

One problem is that the defined constants appear to live in a single
global space, and are set at runtime. So it doesn't make sense to
display them in the locals table, nor in the "superglobals". A
separate "context" (in Xdebug terms) is needed - I would call it "Constants".

If someone can tell me where PHP stores this set of names and values, it
should be straightforward to add this new context to Xdebug.

You mean like "get_defined_constants":
http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/function.get-defined-constants.php

Yes. What would the C code using the PHP API be to do that?

Just to sketch out what I have in mind, all in
xdebug_handler_dbgp.c:

#define DBGP_CONTEXT_LOCALS 0
#define DBGP_CONTEXT_SUPERGLOBALS 1
#define DBGP_CONTEXT_CONSTANTS 2
...

DBGP_FUNC(context_names)
{
...
child = xdebug_xml_node_init("context");
xdebug_xml_add_attribute(child, "name", "Constants");
xdebug_xml_add_attribute(child, "id", "2");
xdebug_xml_add_child(*retval, child);
}

static int attach_context_vars(...) {
if (context_id == DBGP_CONTEXT_SUPERGLOBALS) { ...
} else if (context_id == DBGP_CONTEXT_LOCALS) { ...
} else if (context_id == DBGP_CONTEXT_CONSTANTS) {
?type? constants_list = get_defined_functions();
// And then something that converts constants_list
// into an xdebug_hash, so we can do the following:
xdebug_hash tmp_hash = some_func(constants_list);
tmp_hash = xdebug_used_var_hash_from_llist(fse->used_vars);
xdebug_hash_apply_with_argument(tmp_hash, (void ) node, func, (void ) options);
xdebug_hash_destroy(tmp_hash);
return 0;
}
return 1;
}

I've only gotten my toe wet with the PHP internals, but
this is the path I'd follow.

User defined constants, as defined with define() are now included in context 2 ("User defined constants").

Xdebug now supports debugging user-defined constants. The constants will appear in "context" 2 with context_get (http://xdebug/docs-dbgp.php#id52) and this is also reflected in the context_names (http://xdebug/docs-dbgp.php#context-names) command. It is also possible to call "property_get -c 2 -n ... to fetch the value.

The returned property information will have the facet set to "constant".