Question

I’m trying to have it so, for every single Integer created, some text is outputted. For this, I’m looking to overload (or extend) the default Integer type.

I would like to have a built-in type (Integer, Array, String) to have a custom constructor like

public function __construct($data) { print $data; }

Is this possible? I can’t find it ever even attempted before online.

Edit:

I have tried this:

class Integer { /*...*/ }

And this:

class Integer extends Integer { /*...*/ }

Answer 1

Since PHP native scalar types are not objects, you cannot overload them.
You could write wrapper classes and use them like so:

$int = new Integer(5);

But that’s probably much more work than makes sense.