Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:122327
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: <CAA8DMBvEF25KbCAJdf65_DsAhZi2wsgygJS978mohLAhb69hzg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAA8DMBvEF25KbCAJdf65_DsAhZi2wsgygJS978mohLAhb69hzg@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2024 13:28:26 +0100
Message-ID: <CAPyj-LByeD5eOqgYk+Bwty_RykBQkWxgxEoyA_9DfvHcW+vvSw@mail.gmail.com>
To: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Why are serialized strings wrapped in double quotes? (s:<len>:"<string>")
From: tovilo.ilija@gmail.com (Ilija Tovilo)

Hi Sandy

On Tue, Feb 6, 2024 at 9:19=E2=80=AFPM Sanford Whiteman <figureonecpr@gmail=
.com> wrote:
>
> I'd like a little background on something we've long accepted: why
> does the serialization format need double quotes around a string, even
> though the byte length is explicit?
>
> Example:
>
>   s:5:"hello";
>
> All else being equal I would think we could have just
>
>   s:5:hello;
>
> Was this just to make strings look more 'stringy', even though the
> format isn't meant to be human-readable?

I don't have the historical context, but I'm assuming that's it. PHPs
serialization format is not efficient, and I don't think that was ever
the primary focus. If you need something more efficient, you can try
https://github.com/igbinary/igbinary which is aimed to be a drop-in
replacement.

Ilija