[RFC] Scalar Type Hinting With Casts (re-opening)

Good evening, PHP’s type hinting system is rather incomplete as it does not support scalars, only arrays, callables and objects. In 2012, Anthony Ferrara created an RFC which proposed type hinting for scalar types (int, float, bool, string and resource) with casting, with behaviour nearly the same as that of zend_parse_parameters. Sadly, he later left PHP internals and withdrew his RFCs. Since I am very much in favour of scalar type hints, I’ve updated the patch to master and made some minor improvements, and I am re-opening the RFC with the intent to try and get it into PHP 5.7. The patch is mostly there. It needs some more tests and there are some edge cases I need to deal with, but it otherwise works, and I expect I can finish fixing it up very soon. The RFC is here: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/scalar_type_hinting_with_cast A pull request is here: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/717 I’m hoping I can get this into PHP 5.7. I think scalar type hinting would be a valuable addition to PHP’s existing type hinting system. Thanks! -- Andrea Faulds http://ajf.me/