How to resolve “must be an instance of string, string given” prior to PHP 7?

Question

Here is my code:

function phpwtf(string $s) {
    echo \"$s\\n\";
}
phpwtf(\"Type hinting is da bomb\");

Which results in this error:

Answer 1

^{(originally posted by leepowers in his question)}

The error message is confusing for one big reason:

Primitive type names are not reserved in PHP

The following are all valid class declarations:

class string { }
class int { }
class float { }
class double { }

My mistake was in thinking that the error message was referring solely to the string primitive type - the word 'instance' should have given me pause. An example to illustrate further:

class string { }
$n = 1234;
$s1 = (string)$n;
$s2 = new string();
$a = array('no', 'yes');
printf("\$s1 - primitive string? %s - string instance? %s\n",
        $a[is_string($s1)], $a[is_a($s1, 'string')]);
printf("\$s2 - primitive string? %s - string instance? %s\n",
        $a[is_string($s2)], $a[is_a($s2, 'string')]);

Output:

$s1 - primitive string? yes - string instance? no

$s2 - primitive string? no - string instance? yes

In PHP it's possible for a string to be a string except when it's actually a string. As with any language that uses implicit type conversion, context is everything.