$privilegeStrings = array_filter($privileges, function ($s) { return is_string($s); } );
Is there a better way to specify that I want just the string values in the given array?
You could do:
$privilegeStrings = array_filter($privileges, 'is_string');
array_filter
passes every value of the array to the specified function. So you can just specify the function name and everything will be taken care of.