PHP doesn't have an unsigned integer (or bigint) type, so there's no way to return it as an unsigned integer unless the number gets returned as a float, which obviously risks losing precision. (This is effectively what the "solution" does — on a 32 bit architecture, that addition will cause $unpackedVal to be converted to a float.)

Closing, since this requires a language change (which then requires an RFC, a patch, et cetera).

"so there's no way to return it as an unsigned integer unless the number gets returned as a float" so do it!

The only problem you point out is the possible loss of precission, but afaik loss of precission only occurs with fractional values and values that are much larger than the maximum integer. 

And even if it was the case that some big integer value say X did loss precission when converting to float. This precission would be lost aswell when you do:

$a = X;

because as said php would store it as a float.


Maybe I'm missing something but I really can't understand why it can't return a float type.