<p>I'm just curious if any project exists that attempts to group all (or most) of PHP's built-in functions into a more object-oriented class hierarchy. For example, grouping all the string functions into a single String class, etc.</p>

<p>I realize this won't actually solve any problems (unless the modifications took place at the PHP source code level), since all the built-in functions would still be accessible in the global namespace, but it would certainly make usability much easier.</p>

I think something like this is intergral for PHP to move forward.  Being mainly a .Net programmer, I find PHP painful to work in with it's 1 million and 1 global functions.  It's nice that PHP 5.3 has namespaces, but it doesn't help things much when their own libraries aren't even object oriented, let alone employ namespaces.  I don't mind PHP as a language so much, but their API is terribly disorganized, and it probably needs a complete overhaul.  Kind of like what VB went through when it became VB.Net.