This function is namespace sensitive when calling class constants.
Using:
<?php namespace sub;
class foo {
const BAR = 'Hello World';
}
constant('foo::BAR'); // Error
constant('sub\foo::BAR'); // works
?>
This does not seem to affect constants defined with the 'define' function. Those all end up defined in the root namespace unless another namespace is implicitly defined in the string name of the constant.