What language or format is this in?

Question

After looking at the Wordpress and Joomla database, I began to recognize strings in this format. What is it, how does it work?

here's an example:

a:5:{s:13:"administrator";a:2:{s:4:"name";s:13:"Administrator";s:12:"capabilities";a:62:{s:13:"switch_themes";b:1;s:11:"edit_themes";b:1;

Answer 1

It's a serialized array. Basically a string to be used by the serialize() and unserialize() functions in PHP, the base language for wordpress and likely joomla though I have never worked with joomla myself.

Answer 2

that was serialized string from an object or array.