Re: Is there an RFC/discussion for ::class being a specific type?

> On 17 Nov 2021, at 00:22, André Hänsel <andre@webkr.de> wrote: > > It is common (with DI systems for example) and to my knowledge not > particularly discouraged to have function parameters that are supposed to > accept something like Foo::class, which currently is a string. > > It seems logical to ask for a special type that can hold class names, so > that parameters that can accept a class name can be type hinted more > specifically than just (any) "string". > > Regardless of whether or not such a proposal would be accepted or declined > (for complexity reasons maybe) I couldn't even find any such proposal. Has > this really never been asked? > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: https://www.php.net/unsub.php > Hi André, I’ve wondered about this kind of functionality myself, but IMO to be particularly useful it’d need to support the ability to accept a classname that is a subtype of a parent class or interface. I can’t think of too many places where I’d want to know something is a classname reference, and not also want to know that it's a subclass or implementation of something specific. This typeof functionality could support some very expressive solutions, when combined with union types, and anonymous classes. Cheers Stephen