var_export() from PHP 4.2.0?

I'm very suprised there is var_export() from PHP 4.2.0 that works just like var_dump()/print_r(). If we keep doing this, there will be full of duplicated functions that do almost the same thing with a little different manner. Is there good reason to have this? Am I missing very useful var_export() only feature that cannot be integrated into var_dump()/print_r()? [yohgaki@dev yohgaki]$ php <?php $a = array (1, 2, array ("a", "b", "c")); var_export ($a); echo "\n"; var_dump($a); echo "\n"; print_r($a); ?> array ( 0 => 1, 1 => 2, 2 => array (

    0 => 'a',
    1 => 'b',
    2 => 'c',

), ) array(3) { [0]=> int(1) [1]=> int(2) [2]=> array(3) {

    [0]=>
    string(1) "a"
    [1]=>
    string(1) "b"
    [2]=>
    string(1) "c"

} } Array (

    [0] => 1
    [1] => 2
    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => a
            [1] => b
            [2] => c
        )

)