(PHP 4, PHP 5)
unpack — Unpack data from binary string
Unpacks from a binary string into an array according to the given format .
unpack() works slightly different from Perl as the unpacked data is stored in an associative array. To accomplish this you have to name the different format codes and separate them by a slash /.
Returns an associative array containing unpacked elements of binary string.
Example#1 unpack() example
<?php
$array = unpack("c2chars/nint", $binarydata);
?>
The resulting array will contain the entries "chars1", "chars2" and "int".
Note that PHP internally stores integral values as signed. If you unpack a large unsigned long and it is of the same size as PHP internally stored values the result will be a negative number even though unsigned unpacking was specified.