Pack / unpack a 64-bit int on 64-bit architecture in PHP

Question

Why do I get the following output on an x64 architecture?

$ php -r \'echo pow(2, 33) . \"\\n\";print_r(unpack(\"Ivalue\", pack(\"I\", pow(2, 33))));\'
858993         


        

Answer 1

Here is a function to pack an integer value of any size into N bits:

function encode_int($in, $pad_to_bits=64, $little_endian=true) {
    $in = decbin($in);
    $in = str_pad($in, $pad_to_bits, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT);
    $out = '';
    for ($i = 0, $len = strlen($in); $i < $len; $i += 8) {
        $out .= chr(bindec(substr($in,$i,8)));
    }
    if($little_endian) $out = strrev($out);
    return $out;
}

Here is a function to decode the packed integers:

    function decode_int(&$data, $bits=false) {
            if ($bits === false) $bits = strlen($data) * 8;
            if($bits <= 0 ) return false;
            switch($bits) {
                    case 8:
                            $return = unpack('C',$data);
                            $return = $return[1];
                    break;

                    case 16:
                            $return = unpack('v',$data);
                            $return = $return[1];
                    break;

                    case 24:
                            $return = unpack('ca/ab/cc', $data);
                            $return = $return['a'] + ($return['b'] << 8) + ($return['c'] << 16);
                    break;

                    case 32:
                            $return = unpack('V', $data);
                            $return = $return[1];
                    break;

                    case 48:
                            $return = unpack('va/vb/vc', $data);
                            $return = $return['a'] + ($return['b'] << 16) + ($return['c'] << 32);
                    break;

                    case 64:
                            $return = unpack('Va/Vb', $data);
                            $return = $return['a'] + ($return['b'] << 32);
                    break;

            }
            return $return;
    }