Setting binmode on PHP sockets

Question

I am reading binary data from a network socket in PHP. With files, you can use the 'b' mode to specify that the file is binary and should be read as such, but how does one mark a network socket as being binary?

Answer 1

Network sockets are always assumed to be binary data, so the flag's not necessary. The "binary" name for the flag on file-based operations is somewhat badly chosen. It should be the "do not translate line-ending characters" flag.

Otherwise the obvious reading would be that if you don't specify b, the file should be read in analog mode.

Answer 2

Using unpack() is how php read binary data.

//example:
$un = unpack("V",$some_bin_string);