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In modern PHP development, handling binary data is a common requirement. Binary data is often used for files, images, audio, video, or interactions with low-level systems. Since PHP’s native type system does not directly support binary operations, developers rely on extensions and techniques to improve efficiency. FFI::memcpy, provided by PHP’s FFI (Foreign Function Interface) extension, allows PHP to interact directly with C function libraries, enabling efficient binary data handling.

The scandir function is widely used to list all files and folders within a directory. By default, it does not display hidden files (those starting with a dot .). This can be inconvenient when you need to list everything in a directory, including hidden files. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to use the scandir function to include hidden files.

The html_entity_decode function converts HTML entities (for example & and <) back to their corresponding characters (such as & and <). It is commonly used to revert content that was encoded with htmlspecialchars or htmlentities so it displays correctly. However, in practice some developers find that even when an encoding parameter is passed to html_entity_decode, that parameter seems not to take effect and the conversion does not behave as expected.

HTML entities are encoded forms of characters, usually starting with & and ending with ;. Common HTML entities include:

In programming, it’s common to encounter scenarios where hexadecimal numbers need to be converted into decimal. Sometimes, the hexadecimal input doesn’t meet the expected length, requiring zero-padding to ensure fixed-length output. PHP provides powerful built-in functions, hexdec and str_pad, which make this task simple. This article explains in detail how to combine these two functions to handle hexadecimal conversion and digit padding.

When writing command-line scripts in PHP, you may encounter situations where stream_isatty returns false, causing output formatting issues or unexpected results. This typically occurs when the script’s output behaves differently across environments, especially in certain terminals or when piped. This article explores the root causes of this problem and provides solutions to help developers avoid output issues.

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The crypt function in PHP is used to encrypt strings based on various encryption algorithms such as DES, Blowfish, MD5, and more. It is commonly used for handling password data, as it enhances security through the use of a salt value, helping to prevent common attacks like rainbow table attacks.

This article explains how to use PHP's symlink() function together with is_link() to effectively manage and check symbolic links in your file system.

When using PHP's PDO to interact with databases, developers often rely on PDOStatement::debugDumpParams() to debug SQL statements. This guide walks you through identifying and resolving common data type errors efficiently.

xml_parse_into_struct is a very low-level XML parsing function in PHP that converts an XML document into a series of structured arrays. These arrays contain the tags, attributes, and data of each element in the XML document. Its main advantage is that it provides precise control, allowing you to extract specific information from XML as needed.

The number type used in JSON is based on JavaScript's Number type, which has certain precision limitations. JavaScript's Number type follows the IEEE 754 double-precision floating-point standard (64-bit), capable of representing up to 15 to 17 significant digits. Numbers in JSON that exceed this range may lose precision during conversion.

The basic syntax of the mb_ereg function is as follows: