In PHP, it is a recommended practice to put constants and literals on the right side of comparison operators such as == or ===. This rule is important because it helps prevent potential bugs caused by accidental assignment instead of comparison. Accidentally writing = instead of == is a common mistake, but if the constant is on the left side, PHP will throw an error, making the problem apparent.
Non-compliant code may still function as expected, but it can lead to confusion and hard-to-spot bugs, especially in large codebases or among teams of developers. It is also not considered a best practice in terms of code readability and maintainability.
To avoid this, always place your constants or literals on the right side of your comparison operators. This not only aligns with common practice, but also it allows PHP’s own error handling to assist in catching any accidental assignment errors. This can increase the robustness of your code and decrease debugging time.
