[PHP] Strict error on static call? Solved!

Just a quick post about Strict standard error when we have a class method which would like to behave differently if called statically.
Apparently, and this is a truly old bogus I opened ages ago, the solution was to supress Strict errors (lol, thanks developers) even if in every other programming language, via overload, this kind of situation could be solved in a bit.

How to solve the problem?

While last post I suggested a couple of runtime solutions, this time I suggest to simply avoid the method definition and use a different one with a meaningful name. In this example I created a String class:

class String {

    // choose a recognizable name for protected method
    static  protected   function    _concat(array $arguments){
        return  new self(implode('', $arguments));
    }

    // use magic __callStatic function
    static  public  function    __callStatic($name, array $arguments){
        // check the recognizable name
        switch($name = '_'.$name){
            case    '_concat':
                // return its call
                return  self::$name($arguments);
        }
    }

    protected   $__value__; // save the string somewhere

    // assign initial string, if any
    public  function    __construct($__value__ = ''){
        $this->__value__ = $__value__;
    }

    // use magic __call method
    public  function    __call($name, array $arguments){
        // check the recognizable name
        switch($name = '_'.$name){
            case    '_concat':
                // normalize expected arguments
                array_unshift($arguments, $this->__value__);
                // return its call
                return  self::$name($arguments);
        }
    }

    // this is a String class ... 
    public  function    __toString(){
        return  $this->__value__;
    }

}


// test the alchemy
$str = new String('Hello');
var_dump(
    String::concat('Hello', ' ', 'World', '!') == $str->concat(' ', 'World', '!')
    // true, both are Hello World!
);

As we can see, errors are gone and the code is much easier to maintain. Hope this will help (performances? ... oh, come on!)