XAMPP, PHP: echo adds two spaces to blob read from database

Question

I read blob (word 2010 document) from mysql database and store it in $data variable. When I simply store that data directly in PHP like so:

file_put_contents('c:\\temp\\dump.docx', $data);

I can open dump.docx in Word (size matches original file). If I attempt to send $data like this:

ob_start();
header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename=' . $name);
header('Content-type: ' . $type);
ob_clean();
echo $data;
ob_end_flush();
exit;

The stored file is two bytes longer. There are two spaces in front:

To check if I somehow do not output those spaces, I called ob_get_contents() just before echo and dumped content to a file. File has zero bytes. So it looks like echo is producing those two bytes.

Answer 1

Here's post that helped me: https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/163628/extra-space-at-beginning-of-downloaded-image/163644

ob_start was already called ealier. I needed to call only ob_clean() before sending content.