Question

What I need is an equivalent for PHP’s fseek() function. The function works on files, but I have a variable that contains binary data and I want to work on it. I know I could use substr(), but that would be lame – it’s used for strings, not for binary data. Also, creating a file and then using fseek() is not what I am looking for either.

Maybe something constructed with streams?

EDIT: Okay, I’m almost there:

$data = fopen('data://application/binary;binary,'.$bin,'rb');

Warning: failed to open stream: rfc2397: illegal parameter

Answer 1

Kai:

You have almost answered yourself here. Streams are the answer. The following manual entry will be enlightening: http://us.php.net/manual/en/wrappers.data.php

It essentially allows you to pass arbitrary data to PHP’s file handling functions such as fopen (and thus fseek).

Then you could do something like:

<?php

$data = fopen('data://mime/type;encoding,' . $binaryData);

fseek($data, 128);
?>