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Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2013 22:39:26 +0100
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Subject: New uint native data type?
From: marco@m-s-d.eu (Marco Schuster)

Hi all,

I'm currently writing a php-program to process certain special binary
files, which include 32-bit offsets which I need to read and
manipulate. The problem is that PHPs int type is only 31-bit because
they have sign information. Sure, I could use the GMP/bcmath stuff,
but that isn't really an option because of performance and the fact
that I'd have to use bc* functions everywhere, and the code is already
complex enough. Because I need to do maths and, later on, file
accesses at positions > 2GB, with them and not just print,
sprintf("%u",$val) is not sufficient, too.

Switching to 64-bit doesn't help in my case, as the program interfaces
with external windows-only dependencies and the PHP x64 build doesn't
do 64-bit ints at the moment.

Would it be possible to extend the PHP engine and add a "uint" native
type which allows handling of full 32-bit values and if yes, is there
any documentation about the parts of the engine I need to modify? The
PHP internals manual doesn't have much content and the Zend / main
directories in the source code lack useful information, too.

Thanks,
Marco