Php – What does the \x1a characters mean

From here:

The function ord() gets the int value of the char. And in case you want to convert back after playing with the number, function chr() does the trick.

>>> ord('a')
97
>>> chr(97)
'a'
>>> chr(ord('a') + 3)
'd'
>>>

In Python 2, there was also the unichr function, returning the Unicode character whose ordinal is the unichr argument:

>>> unichr(97)
u'a'
>>> unichr(1234)
u'\u04d2'

In Python 3 you can use chr instead of unichr.

ord() - Python 3.6.5rc1 documentation

ord() - Python 2.7.14 documentation

Timestamps in MySQL are generally used to track changes to records, and are often updated every time the record is changed. If you want to store a specific value you should use a datetime field.

If you meant that you want to decide between using a UNIX timestamp or a native MySQL datetime field, go with the native format. You can do calculations within MySQL that way ("SELECT DATE_ADD(my_datetime, INTERVAL 1 DAY)") and it is simple to change the format of the value to a UNIX timestamp ("SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP(my_datetime)") when you query the record if you want to operate on it with PHP.