Bug #17612: print_r, var_dump, var_export - disable direct output

From: postings.php.net@hans-spath.de Operating system: All PHP version: 4.2.1 PHP Bug Type: Feature/Change Request Bug description: print_r, var_dump, var_export - disable direct output print_r, var_dump and var_export generate direct output. I don't like that, because when I dump a variable that contains HTML tags it messes up my output. I don't like to use some ob_* functions to get that output into a string before I can pass it through htmlentities because that's inperformant and looks ugly. I would like to have a function or a ini setting that controls the behavior of print_r, var_dump and var_export. There should be two modes: direct output and returning a string. I think that would be great to people who want to write debug informations into an external file, too. -- Edit bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=17612&edit=1 -- Fixed in CVS: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=17612&r=fixedcvs Fixed in release: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=17612&r=alreadyfixed Need backtrace: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=17612&r=needtrace Try newer version: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=17612&r=oldversion Not developer issue: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=17612&r=support Expected behavior: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=17612&r=notwrong Not enough info: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=17612&r=notenoughinfo Submitted twice: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=17612&r=submittedtwice register_globals: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=17612&r=globals