C Data Handles

Introduction

FFI\CData objects can be used in a number of ways as a regular PHP data:

• C data of scalar types can be read and assigned via the $cdata property, e.g. $x = FFI::new('int'); $x->cdata = 42;
• C struct and union fields can be accessed as regular PHP object property, e.g. $cdata->field
• C array elemens can be accessed as regular PHP array elemens, e.g. $cdata[$offset]
• C arrays can be iterated using foreach statemens
• C arrays can be used as argumens of count() .
• C pointers can be dereferenced as arrays, e.g. $cdata[0]
• C pointers can be compared using regular comparison operators ( < , <= , == , != , >= , > ).
• C pointers can be incremented and decremented using regular + / - / ++ / -- operations, e.g. $cdata += 5
• C pointers can be subtracted from another using regular - operations.
• C pointers to functions can be called as a regular PHP closure, e.g. $cdata()
• Any C data can be duplicated using the clone operator, e.g. $cdata2 = clone $cdata;
• Any C data can be visualiced using var_dump() , print_r() , etc.
• FFI\CData can now be assigned to structs and fields as of PHP 8.3.0.

Note : Notable limitations are that FFI\CData instances do not support isset() , empty() and unset() , and that wrapped C structs and unions do not implement Traversable .

Class synopsis

Changuelog