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Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2024 11:51:41 -0800
To: "Sanford Whiteman" <figureonecpr@gmail.com>,
 "PHP Internals" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Why are serialized strings wrapped in double quotes?
 (s:<len>:"<string>")
From: jimw@trainedmonkey.com ("Jim Winstead")

On Tue, Feb 6, 2024, at 12:19 PM, Sanford Whiteman wrote:
> Howdy all, haven't posted in ages but good to see the list going stron=
g.
>
> 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?

I enjoy spelunking in the history of the project, so I did some digging.=
 It looks to me like Kris didn't quite get the history correct. Boris di=
d propose a form of serialization first, but it looks like what became s=
erialize() and unserialize() came into the project another way.

https://marc.info/?l=3Dphp-general&m=3D90222513234434&w=3D2

The serialize() and unserialize() functions were first added in PHP 3.0.=
5 with that same encoding for strings that you're asking about. Here is =
the original proposal for adding the functions from Jani Lehtim=C3=A4ki:

https://news-web.php.net/php.dev/1444

The were originally conceived as var_save() and var_load() and operated =
on files, but you can see the file format uses the same string encoding,=
 although it used single quotes.

It was committed to CVS by Stig here, but unfortunately the emails to th=
e list didn't include newly-added files.

https://news-web.php.net/php.dev/1540

I'm not sure if the old CVS history is preserved somewhere, but based on=
 what appeared in 3.0.5, that format probably goes back to the beginning=
 and it doesn't look like there was any on-list discussion about it.

Jim