printing special characters in PHP

Dear ALL, I've an binary file with special (non-printable) characters including '<' '/' & '>'. I retrieve this file from the database, into a variable $binaryFILE. I then copy the content to a temporary file, opened with handle $handle : if (!fwrite($handle, $binaryFILE)) {

          echo "Failed to copy $bname...";
      }
      else
      {
          echo "Success";
      }

The file copies to a file on the filesystem correctly. However, if I try to print out the characters of this file on a browser, using echo $binaryFILE; the output isn't the same. The characters '<' and '>' and anything included within is not printed. I tried printing line by line, using: $binaryMS = explode("",$binaryMMS); foreach ($binaryFILE as $ii) { echo $ii; } However, no change in result. Do I print character by character? I shall appreciate any pointers on this problem. Many Thanks Antonio