note 78533 deleted from language.oop5.typehinting by cmb

Note Submitter: Jazz ---- To Nikivich and Edorian: There are many times when you would use an equals() method other than to find out if the two objects are the same object. Think of all the primitive wrapper classes in Java, for example -- if you create two new Integer()'s with identical values, equals() returns true, even though they are two different objects. There would be no reason to allow someone to perform an equals() between an Integer and, say, a GregorianCalendar -- it just doesn't make sense. In Java you would attempt this and probably get a ClassCastException, but in PHP no such facility exists, so the best way to prevent this would be through type hinting. The point Nicholas was making is that you can't specify a stricter type hint on an inherited method, and despite your arguments, that would be a truly useful thing to be able to do. (True overloading would be a better way, IMHO, but *shrug*)