However, I did have some time to think about this, and realise now that, aside from third-party solutions such as your own, there appear to be only two ways to resolve this issue:

1) evolve PHP to support unsigned integers, which would require a reworking of the protocols, API and future developer PHP code;
2) develop a built-in class to handle additional precision (in machine code, it would be faster than my pappy on his honeymoon).

I did find this tasty link, too: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/872424/unsigned-int-to-signed-in-php

Regarding your library, I trust my post didn’t appear critical. Real programmers use whatever tools best serve their needs in the moment. I never thought I’d pay Java any attention, but now I find myself enjoying coding in it. This is a sure sign Armageddon’s coming fast.

As for the library, the sole purpose was to solve this problem, no more no less. If I really needed speed, I’d do it in C, or I’d extend PHP to do it as a plugin. I didn’t add multiply and divide because I didn’t need it for the problem at hand.

It’s funny that it wasn’t until now, after 10 years of on-and-off PHP coding, that I discovered this discrepancy. I never thought I would refer to PHP’s programmers as lazy, but this takes the cake. PHP should inherently know whether to deal with an integer as signed or unsigned; the CPU does, so PHP can.

By the way, poster, cool class. You’re right about its speed, though. PHP is still interpreted, bytecode or not, and having this functionality coded into PHP would be much quicker. I’m not at all surprised you didn’t code in float, multiply and divide operations.

(OMG, Razzed needs JS and cookies to post a message? Ok, I’ll add you guys to the list with PHP. Thanks.)

sprintf(‘%u’, $num)

This code will return the unsigned representation of the number (and that’s a string btw)

And I got stuck with the unsigned problem too. :)
Thanks a bunch for this solution.

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