Unpack ... how the heck does it work?

[Anon]

Hello,
I have been working with a c-based file record system and want to read the records containg short, long both unsigned and signed etc. in a data file to php variables.

I must use 3... ver(for OCI) hence fscanf is not an option. I have tried a lot with Unpack but either cannot get the format string correctly or whatever. But the variables invariably contain junk. And never meaningful int, short, long, char etc.

Heres a part of the code
<?php
// read the file and get length
if(!$inxfile=fopen("section.inx","r")) die('could not open index file');
if(!$length=filesize("section.inx"))
die('file size is zero');
else
echo("Length of index file: ".$length." bytes.<br>");
$Stream=fread($inxfile,4);
$rec=Unpack("l",$Stream);
if (isset($rec)) echo("your data id --->".$rec[0]."<---");
else echo("not defined");
}
// does not give "not defined" yet does not even yield the long number stored.
?>

     Could any body please comment on this or help. It is an urgent matter and your quick response will be very helpful.

Thanking you in anticipation.
Alok.

[Anon]

Does this function work with data generated with the PHP pack() function?

[Anon]

Hi,
I have tried it now, but could still not get the results. The resulting array is an associative array, and its index names have to be given in the format string. However the number obtained after unpacking is not the number that was packed...
Here is the srcipt i used to test...
$dump=fopen("dump.txt","w");
$num1=5;
//settype($num1,"integer"); also not works
$num2=15;
//settype($num2,"integer");
$struct=pack("ii",$num1,$num2);
fwrite($dump,$struct,8);
fclose($dump);
$dump=fopen("dump.txt","r");
$struct_read=fread($dump,8);
$array=unpack("inum1/inum2",$struct_read);
//settype($array[num1],"integer");
//settype($array[num2],"integer");
echo("--->".$array[num1]."<---<br>");
echo("--->".$array[num2]."<---<br>");
fclose($dump);

Heres is the o/p
--->1546673157<---
--->254827568<---

now where could the problem be?
Waiting for your comments/replies,
Alok

[Anon]

Must be a bug in your php/setup.

I use php 4.0.2 with mysql 3.23 and apache 1.3.12 on redhat 6.2 (mentioning the versions because of the oracle support slowdown mystery)

When I run your script is outputs exactly 5 and 15.

What version of php are you running?
Does the dump.txt get written properly?

[Anon]

Yes you are right, there is some problem in the version 3.0.14 php itself. I ran it on Apache and windows 98. One of my friend ran the srcipt in 4.0.2/ RH6.2 and it ran fine there. If you know that it runs fine in some place with the same config. then please tell.
I don't think there is any problem in the configuration of php here as all other things seem to run fine. However if u do insist the problem is with .ini settings then which areas to look into?
Regards,
Alok.