PHP6 artifact - binary strings

Hi all, Since PHP-5.2.1 we have an artifact of PHP-6 in the engine means we can define binary strings but such definitions haven't any effect. So what we can define is the following: $str = "str"; $bin = b"b\0i\0n"; $str2bin = (binary)$str; One of the biggest issue is that currently ALL strings will be handled as ASCII-7 compatible strings on type-juggling but they aren't. It would be very appreciated if PHP could respect such binary declaration: * use binary string comparison on compare a binary string to any other string * don't convert binary strings into integers on array keys * allow bitwise operators on binary strings without casting to integer I don't wont to open such unicode nightmare as it was planned for PHP-6! In my opinion the above operator changes are enough and therefore internal functions doesn't need to be changed in the first place. The only changes *could* be done to functions reading/parsing data to be auto marked binary like: unpack, stream reading functions opened with fopen + "b" ... I don't have enough zend experience and therefore I would like to know how complicated it would be. Thoughts? Marc