How to get a readable string from binary data in PHP?

Question

I have a string with a few non non-printable bytes. I want to convert this string into a human readable format. Non-printable charachters can be represented with something like ? or <07>, printable charachters should remain untouched.

Is there an easy way to do that in PHP?

A byte is always binary... Please supply us with an example input and output... In the meantime, read up on ord(), chr(), unpack() and bindec() — RichardBernards
– RichardBernards, Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 12:28

Niet the Dark Absol · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-11 13:08:20Z

2

There are many, many ways to do something like this.

My choice would be:

$string = preg_replace_callback('/[\x00-\x08\x0B\x0C\x0E-\x1F]/',function($char) {
    // format as desired, for instance:
    return "{".dechex(ord($char[0]))."}";
},$string);

You can define "non-printable" how you want, the one I did there is basically "Everything before Space, but allow Tab, CR and LF".

edited Dec 11, 2014 at 13:08

answered Dec 11, 2014 at 12:26

Niet the Dark Absol

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3 Comments

BetaRide Over a year ago

Thanks for pointing me into the right direction. I had to replace the double quotes around the pattern to singel quotes. Furhter more the function takes an array not a single character. So I had to change it to function($match) {return "{".dechex(ord($match[0]))."}";} .

Niet the Dark Absol Over a year ago

@BetaRide I've updated my answer with those edits - sorry for the confusion there :D

DAG Over a year ago

well this fixed a problem for me where I could NOT explode a string even if I could see the needle in there, I just returned "" instead . thank you so much

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