function to get a passed variables name?

[zeb]

I am looking for a way to get the name of a passed variable. For example: in the following code, I pass the variable $myVar to the function myFunction. I need myFunction to be able to know that the variable is called myVar

<?php

$myVar = 'string';

function myFunction( $input )
    {
    echo [the name of $input]; // something like this
    }

myFunction( $myVar );

?>

// the above function call would output the following:
myVar

Does anyone have any idea how to do this?

[bubblenut]

You can't, why do you need this? If you give a little more info about the situation we may be able to figure out a workaround.

[zeb]

It's a small function for development purposes only. I got sick of writing:

echo "<pre>";
print_r( $variable );
echo "</pre>";

all the time, so I created my own function:

function echo_r( $in, $label = '' )
    {
    echo "<pre><b>$label</b><br>";
    print_r( $in );
    echo "</pre>";
    }

I have to pass a label separately in order to print out the variable name that I'm printing. Since I do this a lot through the development stages, I am trying to find easier ways to accomplish this.

If it can't be done it's no big deal... But if it could, then I could also pass multiple variables to this function and iterate through each passed variable without having to "label" each one.