Question

I write some class to work with string like in C#.

Here it is:

class String {

        private $origin_string = null;
        private $result_string = null;

        function __construct($string)
        {
            $this->origin_string = $string;
            $this->result_string = $this->origin_string;
        }

        public function Trim()
        {
            $this->result_string = Trim($this->result_string);
            return $this->result_string;
        }

        public function StartWith($string)
        {
            return (substr($this->result_string, 0, strlen($string)) === $string);
        }

        public function EndWith($string)
        {
            $endlen = strlen($string);
            $strlen = strlen($this->result_string);
            return (substr($this->result_string, $strlen - $endlen, $endlen) === $string);
        }

        public function Contains($string) {
            return (strpos($this->result_string, $string) !== false);
        }

        public function Replace($search, $string) {
            $this->result_string = str_replace($search, $string, $this->result_string);
            return $this->result_string;
        }

        public function __invoke($string) {
            $this->origin_string = $string;
            $this->result_string = $this->origin_string;
            return $this;
        }

        public function __toString()
        {
            return $this->result_string;
        }

        public static function Override($string)
        {
            return new self($string);
        }

    }

In use:

$s = new String("My custom string");

if ($s->StartWith("My"))
    $s->Replace("custom", "super");

print $s; // "My super string"

To correct print my text from object i use magic method __toString().

Question:
Is there a method, the inverse __toString?
That is so we can write:

$s = "new text";

And the line is assigned to variables within the object.

($s – an existing object “String” in the example above.)

An analogue of the method __set, only in relation to the object, not the variable inside it.

While using the __invoke, but it’s not quite what I want.

Answer 1

No.

$s = "new text"; assigns the (native PHP) string "new text" to the variable $s. It overwrites whatever $s was before. It does not call any methods on $s if $s is an object.

You’d have to alter the core behavior of PHP to achieve something like that. You’ll always have to explicitly call a method on your String object.