How can I find out the name of a variable inside a function?

Question

I have a function

function my_dump($a,$name){
    echo \'
\'.$name.\":\\n\";
    var_export($a);
    echo \'
\';
}

How can

Answer 1

If it is a simple script, where all variables are defined in the global scope, you could get for the $GLOBALS solution:

function my_dump($a){
    if(is_string($a) and isset($GLOBALS[$a])) {
        echo "varname: $a\n";
        $a=&$GLOBALS[$a];
    }
    echo '
'.$name.":\n";
    var_export($a);
    echo '
';
}

this way you can call the dump function with the variable name instead

my_dump("cool_variable_name");

instead of

my_dump($cool_variable_name);