I am working on a programming project and came across a situation where I need to perform bitwise operations on binary data in PHP. I have some binary data and I want to manipulate it using bitwise operators. However, I am not sure if PHP supports this functionality. Can I use operators to perform bitwise operations on binary data in PHP? If yes, could you please explain how? And if not, is there an alternative way to achieve this? Any help is appreciated.

Absolutely, you can indeed use operators to carry out bitwise operations on binary data in PHP. The language offers a range of bitwise operators that allow you to manipulate binary values in a variety of ways.
Let's say you have two binary numbers: 1101 and 0100. Suppose you want to perform a bitwise OR operation on these binary values. You can achieve this using the '|' operator like so:
In this example, the '|' operator performs a bitwise OR operation on the two binary numbers, resulting in 1101. By utilizing the `decbin()` function, you can convert the outcome back into binary format.
Aside from the bitwise OR operator, PHP supports various other operators for distinct bitwise operations. For example, '^' is for bitwise XOR, '<<' for left shift, '>>' for right shift, and '~' for bitwise NOT.
It is crucial to bear in mind that PHP treats binary data as integers. Therefore, you may need to convert your binary representation into integers prior to executing bitwise operations. Moreover, PHP also permits working with bitwise operations on strings, offering additional flexibility.
I hope this clarifies the matter for you! If you have any more queries, feel free to ask.