accessing the name of a referenced variable

[subwayman]

I am passing a variable to a function and I want the function to know the name of the array passed. It's for a simple debug logging function.

Example:

function dump_array($var) {

...
echo "Array <name of $var> is empty<br>";
...

}

and the call:

dump_array($_POST);

Would result in:

Array $_POST is empty.

Anyone got an idea?

[leatherback]

Have you tried:
dump_array($POST, '$POST');

[subwayman]

That would work but if I have a function tree and the dump_array function is ten levels down I would have to pass the string name of the original variable in every function call which all gets a bit cumbersome. Thanks for the fast post. Impressive.

[NogDog]

You could pass just the name of the variable instead of the variable itself:

<?php
function example($var)
{
   global ${$var};
   echo "The value of $var is ${$var}.";
}
$test = "foobar";
example('test');  // outputs: The value of test is foobar.
//