How to get a variable name as a string in PHP?

Question

Say i have this PHP code:

$FooBar = \"a string\";

i then need a function like this:

print_var_name($FooBar);

Answer 1

This is the way I did it

function getVar(&$var) {
    $tmp = $var; // store the variable value
    $var = '_$_%&33xc$%^*7_r4'; // give the variable a new unique value
    $name = array_search($var, $GLOBALS); // search $GLOBALS for that unique value and return the key(variable)
    $var = $tmp; // restore the variable old value
    return $name;
}

Usage

$city  = "San Francisco";
echo getVar($city); // city

Note: some PHP 7 versions will not work properly due to a bug in array_search with $GLOBALS, however all other versions will work.

See this https://3v4l.org/UMW7V