Which PHP function to use to read a binary file into a string?
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.
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.
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