Proposal: Type Casting User Classes

Hey everyone, I want to get a feel for something I would like to implement into PHP core. I would like to be able to cast objects to my own class types. Similar to already available PHP syntax: $foo = (string) $bar; The syntax would look like this: $foo = (\My\FooObject) $bar; It would also support: $foo = ( (\My\FooObject) $bar )->myFooObjectFunction(); I'm still trying to decide what would happen internally and I would like some feedback. I'm thinking of 3 different things it could do: 1) Directly change the class type, functionally equivalent to: function castType($object, $type) { return unserialize(preg_replace("/^O:[0-9]+:\"[^\"]+\":/i", "O:".strlen($type).":\"$type\":", serialize($object))); } 2) Throw a fatal error if the object doesn't match the type trying to be cast. 3) Add a new static magic method called __cast() that would allow the developer to decide what happens. Like this: namespace \My; class FooObject { public static function __cast($foo) { // Do stuff here return new FooObject; } } I'm willing to implement this myself if everybody else likes this idea. Thanks! Chris London