Re: Why are serialized strings wrapped in double quotes? (s:<len>:"<string>")

> 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. Thanks Ilija. That'll have to suffice unless someone remembers a specific decision (searching all the old Internals posts nothing came up). Most of my readers are pretty junior but I hate to say something that conflicts with their intuition. — S. On Wed, Feb 7, 2024 at 7:28 AM Ilija Tovilo <tovilo.ilija@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Sandy > > On Tue, Feb 6, 2024 at 9:19 PM 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 > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: https://www.php.net/unsub.php >