This is what a good IDE brings to the table, it'll show that $result is of type string.

The pipe operator (including T_BLING) was one of the few things I enjoyed when writing Hack at Meta.

> This is what a good IDE brings to the table, it'll show that $result is of type string.

I think the parent is referring to what the result _means_, rather than its type. Functional programming can, at times, obfuscate meaning a bit compared to good ol’ imperative style.