Declaring Variable Types in PHP?

Question

I was trying to get my Netbeans to autocomplete with PHP, and I learned that this code is valid in PHP:

function blah(Bur $bur) {}

A couple of

Answer 1

1. Specifying a data type for a function parameter will cause PHP to throw a catchable fatal error if you pass a value which is not of that type. Please note though, you can only specify types for classes, and not primitives such as strings or integers.
2. Most IDE's can infer a data type from a PHPDoc style comment if one is provided. e.g.

/**
 * @var string
 */
public $variable = "Blah";