Following my posting and the following discussion about "Type Hints throwing a fatal-non-catchable error when a wrong object is passed", I wrote up a patch that adds a new error level to PHP (6): E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR. This error level can be used for cases where the engine decides that something is wrong, but when it doesn't end up in an unstable state. This means that we have yet another level, and they should be used IMO for the following cases:

E_NOTICE: Just for little notices to inform the user that something might have gone wrong.

E_WARNING: Something went wrong, probably resulting in unwanted behavior

• should be fixed by the script's writer.

E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR: An error situation occurred, which is probably dangerous for a script to continue, but does not leave the Engine itself in an unstable state. If this one is not caught in a user defined error handler, the application aborts.

E_ERROR: The engine is in an unstable state, we have to abort. Not catchable by a user defined error handler.

For now the new error level E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR is only implemented for type-hints, but lots of extensions are still using E_ERROR, when there is no need for it. They need updating to make those errors E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR, or preferrably E_WARNING (or even E_NOTICE).

Update: We renamed E_RECOVERABLE to E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR.

The patch is online for 6.0 (already committed) and 5.1 (not committed).