How to Convert a String to a Byte Array in PHP?

Converting String to Byte Array in PHP

Converting a string to a byte array in PHP requires translating individual characters into their corresponding byte values. For a functionality similar to Java's getBytes() method, you can employ the following approach:

$byte_array = unpack('C*', $string);

The unpack() function with the 'C' format flag decomposes the string into an array of integer values representing the ASCII codes of each character. These values range from 0 to 255, effectively converting the string into a byte array.

For example, consider the string "The quick fox jumped over the lazy brown dog":

$byte_array = unpack('C*', 'The quick fox jumped over the lazy brown dog');
var_dump($byte_array); // Output: array(44) { ... (hexadecimal values) ... }

The resulting array $byte_array contains the integer values corresponding to each character's ASCII code in hexadecimal format.

It's important to note that var_dump() displays the values in hexadecimal format by default. However, they can be easily converted to their decimal equivalents using the chr() function, if desired.

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