Hello everyone! Multiple frameworks and libraries define interfaces or objects that wrap around some scalar value and add behavior, the most common case being arrays and Collection / Hash[Set|List] objects. Although this objects benefit from the possibility of having behavior themselves, sometimes the implementation is outside our project scope (an external dependency) and interaction between this object and other blocks of code that expect scalar types usually needs to be controlled by the user, which adds the necessity for adapters or some sort of mediator.
Now that we have the ability to hint return types, a common interface could be built that, given an object that implements it, lets userland code use this object as if it were the scalar type it is wrapping. Unboxing the object is pretty easy, and I wouldn't go as far as proposing interfaces for rebuilding the object itself (not now, at least). So, what do you think of a set of interfaces that allow userland objects to be used as scalar types? Some simple examples in PHP here: https://gist.github.com/guiwoda/5d16c8fb97d29e476d20 Cheers!
