var_export

(PHP 4 = 4.2.0)

var_export -- Outputs or returns a string representation of a variable

Description

mixed var_export ( mixed expression [, bool return])

This function returns structured information about the variable that is passed to this function. It is similar to var_dump() with the exception that the returned representation is valid PHP code.

You can also return the variable representation by using TRUE as second parameter to this function.

Compare var_export() to var_dump().

 pre 
 ?php
$a = array (1, 2, array ("a", "b", "c"));
var_export ($a);

/* output:
array (
  0 =  1,
  1 =  2,
  2 =  
  array (
    0 =  'a',
    1 =  'b',
    2 =  'c',
  ),
)
*/

$b = 3.1;
$v = var_export($b, TRUE);
echo $v;

/* output:
3.1
*/
? 
 /pre