Mixed type-hint

Regarding the mixed type-hint RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/mixed-typehint > When no native type is present, it is unclear what type is expected Regarding variance - in the examples shown in the RFC, it is still unclear whether your intention was variance, or if you just omitted the type-hint by accident. The introduction of the mixed type-hint, as I was trying to explain earlier, could have addressed that problem - by allowing mixed variance only with an explicit type-hint and disallowing implicit variance. As I pointed out when the variance RFCs were accepted, it's too late to remove this allowance now, as that would be a breaking change. However, could we at least make it an E_STRICT? So that, given the following: class A { public function foo(int $value) {} } The following would emit an E_STRICT: class B extends A { public function foo($value) {} // E_STRICT: implied variance } And the following would not: class B extends A { public function foo(mixed $value) {} // explicit variance } An E_STRICT is not a breaking change, right? At least then we can map E_STRICT to an ErrorException during development. Without this, the mixed type-hint is basically meaningless noise, is it not? About as effective is a doc-block?