What is the purpose of the php unpack function?

The PHP unpack function is used to decompress binary data and return an array containing the decompressed data. Typically, the unpack function is used to extract various data types such as integers, floating-point numbers, and strings from binary data. Users can tell the unpack function how to decompress the binary data by specifying a format string. The format string can include specific format control characters to represent different types of data, as well as specify the size and byte order of the data. Based on the format string’s instructions, the unpack function will decompress the binary data sequentially and return an array containing the decompressed data.