Quoting Moshe Weitzman <weitzman@tejasa.com>:
We should however keep an optional second argument. I don't always use the same second argument, and that's intentional.
we now have six years of experience with variable_get(). We rarely rarely use this technique. I don't think we have to design for such rare cases. Just because we can think of a use case does not mean we have to directly support it. My .02
i welcome the centralization of defaults.
I didn't think of this when responding to Gabor but here is another what if: We make the second argument optional and if not supplied we use the constant DEFAULT__MY_VARIABLE and if both are missing the variable name is used. This gives Gabor a key to use to translate the text and it gives others a smoother transition after six years of using variable_get. Earnie