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PHP developers can achieve type-safe collections without native generics by combining variadic constructors with the unpacking operator for input validation, custom iterators with covariant return types for output safety, and static analysis annotations. This pattern uses PHP's existing features to guarantee collections only contain objects of a specific type, throwing TypeErrors at entry points and maintaining type information through iteration. While requiring boilerplate code (two classes, ~90 lines), the approach provides compile-time safety through tools like PHPStan and runtime guarantees through native type checking, offering a pragmatic alternative to waiting for language-level generics.

Type-Safe Collections

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