Bug #12381: Data Structure Dumper Feature Needed

From: cdaveb@csua.berkeley.edu Operating system: Linux PHP version: 4.0.6 PHP Bug Type: Feature/Change Request Bug description: Data Structure Dumper Feature Needed I'd like to suggest that a built in function for dumping PHP data structures (arrays, variables, etc.) into a string which could then be exported to a file be created. This would work something like the Perl Data::Dumper module. This would be extremely useful for creation of persistent datastructures, especially helpful for programs which include web interfaces to edit settings which are used by another portion of the program. I find myself writing simple code to do this a lot, but it is something that gets pretty messy whenever I'm trying to recreate multidimensional arrays and such so that they can later be required into a PHP page. I'm sure that a function of this type would be useful to a lot of PHP users and I hope you'll consider adding it. I've looked at a lot of the code repository sites by the way, and I haven't found anything that seems to resemble what I'm looking for already available, but I think it's the type of thing that should really be a part of the base PHP. -- Edit bug report at: http://bugs.php.net/?id=12381&edit=1