That won't work. Then I will get what the VALUE of $bar is set to. I want the actual text "bar". Basically everything after the "$" -- ie. The NAME of the VARIABLE, not it's contents. The closest I've come so far is to do this. Function myname($foo) { echo "variable named $foo has the contents $$foo"; } Myname('bar'); Which is pretty lame. > -----Original Message----- > From: Ryan A [mailto:ryan@xxxxxxxxxxxx] > Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 6:57 PM > To: daevid@xxxxxxxxxx > Cc: php > Subject: Re: Is there a way to get a variable name as a string? > > Maybe something like: > > > Function myname ($foo) > { > $return_value="the variable name passed in is ".$foo; > return $return_value; > } > > echo myname($bar); > > > Just a guess..... > > > On 7/19/2005 3:27:57 AM, Daevid Vincent (daevid@xxxxxxxxxx) wrote: > > Is there a way to get the name of a variable as a string? > For example... > > > > Function myname ($foo) > > { > > echo "the variable name passed in is ".realname($foo); > > } > > > > myname($bar); > > ^^^^ > > > > I want to see printed out: > > > > "the variable name passed in is bar" > > ^^^ > > > > Dig what > > I'm trying to do? > > > > And 'why?' you may ask am I trying to do this... Well, I am > sick of always > > putting an "echo 'printing > > out > > bar:'; print_r($bar);" all the time. I want > > to make a wrapper function. > > > > I also have written one for XML that would be nice to make > a NAME='bar' > > attribute... > > > > /** > > * Print out an array in XML form (useful for debugging) > > * @access public > > * @author Daevid Vincent [daevid@xxxxxxxxxx] > > * @since 4.0b4 > > * @version 1.0 > > * @date 07/18/05 > > */ > > function print_r_xml($myArray) > > { > > print xmltag('ARRAY', array('NAME'=>'myArray'), 1); > > foreach($myArray as $k => $v) > > { > > if (is_array($v)) > > print_r_xml($v); > > else > > print xmltag($k,htmlspecialchars($v)); > > } > > print xmltag('ARRAY', null, 2); > > } > > > > -- > > P > > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php