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PHP PHP Basics (Retired) PHP Operators Logical Operators

Luca Spezzano
Luca Spezzano
10,417 Points
Posted by Luca Spezzano
Luca Spezzano
10,417 Points

var_dump

What does exactly var_dump?

1 Answer

Gareth Borcherds
Gareth Borcherds
9,372 Points
Gareth Borcherds
Gareth Borcherds
9,372 Points

var_dump is a pretty powerful PHP function that I use all the time to help debug things. var_dump essentially will tell you what type of variable something is along with the value. So an example:

$variable = "test";
var_dump($variable);

//var_dump will output string(4) "test"

So this would tell you that the variable $variable is a string of length 4 with a value of test. You can use this to find out if something is an integer, boolean, and for arrays it'll actually do this for every element in the array. It's a great way to test if a function is actually returning data and what type of data it is. It's also easier than trying to figure out if you need to use print, print_r, or echo to output a variable value.