trying to understand PHP unpack();

Hi In Perl I have a part of a script.... # cut.. my $line = '!v2005*08|05+09?04^19*!'; my ( $s_code, $year, $month, $day, $hour, $minute, $second, $e_code ) = unpack ( "x1 A1 A4 x1 A2 x1 A2 x1 A2 x1 A2 x1 A2 A1", $line ); print $s_code . "\n"; print $year . "\n"; print $month . "\n"; print $day . "\n"; print $hour . "\n"; print $minute . "\n"; print $second . "\n"; print $e_code . "\n"; sleep 10; # so we can see it in the command window In Perl this runs without trouble, in PHP it does not seem to work the same way. Can someone explain to me what I need to do differently to allow PHP to understand what I am trying to do! <? my $line = '!v2005*08|05+09?04^19*!'; $output = unpack ( "x1 A1 A4 x1 A2 x1 A2 x1 A2 x1 A2 x1 A2 A1", $line ); print_r ( $output ); ?> Thanks SD