If having a zero-based index is useful/necessary, then instead of:
$int_list = unpack("s*", $some_binary_data);
try:
$int_list = array_merge(unpack("s*", $some_binary_data));
This will return a 0-based array:
$int_list[0] = x
$int_list[1] = y
$int_list[2] = z
...
rather than the default 1-based array returned from unpack when no key is supplied:
$int_list[1] = x
$int_list[2] = y
$int_list[3] = z
...
It's not used often, but array_merge() with only one parameter will compress a sequentially-ordered numeric-index, starting with an index of [0].
