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Are there any plans to include type hinting with basic types and type
hinting for variables? (such as optional declaration)

There are no such things planned, except for "array" afaik.
That is quite good already, but...

It would be useful to declare the type of a data member of a class, for
example, for automation of data fetching from SQL databases or such
things.

That is definitely not on the list - PHP is weakly typed and will
remain so.
I can't understand why being able to point some variable as strongly typed and
remaining the default as weak typed would make php strongly typed. In fact,
that assumption IS incorrect, a language is weakly typed when variable types
are not forced to be respected though they already exist and change
dynamically, and the programmer actively having to point a variable as
strongly typed for the scope of a function obviously does not contradict that
postulate.
Even more, just having that feature in object data members would be heaven.
Basic type hinting can be emulated using is_int, is_string, and so on on the
beginning of the function needing that, but for objects it can not be done to
know the type of a data member previously to it's assignment, and having to
assign a value in the constructor forces one to declare a specific
constructor doing that for classes that derive or implement an interface that
has functions using that type for automation of tasks. Code just would be
really so cleaner just by allowing one to put a type in front of an object
data member declaration and allowing to retrieve that type.

For example, consider this code:

abstract class base {
function __construct() {
// constructor just sets up some things
}
function someoperation() {
/* this function needs to load the data members of basic types with some
clear values but everything that is an object or an array must be filled
through some specific process that can be automated just knowing the specific
type in advance */
}
}

class specific_class {
function construct() {
$var1 = new SomeClass;
$var2 = new SomeOtherClass;
}
private $var1;
private $var2;
}

would the types could be showed int the class, function someoperation could
still perform its task without any change, but specific_class now would be
just the following:

class specific_class {
private SomeClass $var1;
private SomeOtherClass $var2;
}

Which is identical to the upper version. Moreover, specifying the constructor
parameters in the declaration should not be a problem, as it is equivalent
code to the upper version.

Well, i hope all this can be useful!

Regards
Leo

Derick

--
Derick Rethans
http://derickrethans.nl | http://ez.no | http://xdebug.org

--

Leonardo Pedretti
Axon Sistemas
Líder de Equipo Proyecto Basalto