Which PHP function to use to read a binary file into a string?
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3 Answers
file_get_contents is good enough. It seems that it read files in binary mode. I have made a little PHP script to check this. No MISMATCH messages was produced.
<?php
foreach (glob('/usr/bin/*') as $binary) {
$php = md5(file_get_contents($binary));
$shell = shell_exec("md5sum $binary");
if ($php != preg_replace('/ .*/s', '', $shell)) {
echo 'MISMATCH', PHP_EOL;
}
else {
echo 'MATCH', PHP_EOL;
}
echo $php, ' ', $binary, PHP_EOL;
echo $shell, PHP_EOL;
}
The following note is from manual:
Note: This function is binary-safe.
1 Comment
Larry K
THis is the best answer. +1 for supplying a test. Well done.
You are looking for fread function.
fread — Binary-safe file read
Example:
$filename = "c:\\files\\somepic.gif";
$handle = fopen($filename, "rb");
$contents = fread($handle, filesize($filename));
fclose($handle);
Note:
On systems which differentiate between binary and text files (i.e. Windows) the file must be opened with 'b' included in fopen() mode parameter.
1 Comment
Álvaro González
The important bit here is the
b flag in fopen().Try this
$handle = @fopen("/path/to/file.bin", "rb");
if ($handle) {
while (!feof($handle)) {
$buffer[] = fgets($handle, 400);
}
fclose($handle);
$buffer[0][0] = chr(hexdec("FF")); // set the first byte to 0xFF
}
// convert array to string
4 Comments
Poonam Bhatt
why to set first byte to 0xFF?
Álvaro González
Under Windows, this code will treat files as plain text and will possibly corrupt the contents you read.
Poonam Bhatt
Thanks to Shakti Singh and Álvaro G. Vicario
foobarfuzzbizz
You should call fopen() with 'rb', not 'r', so that it does reads as binary instead of text.