var_info

[Fleshgrinder]

Proposal for a function that provides the ability to retrieve a human readable description of a variable’s current value for more useful debugging, error, and exception messages in PHP software.

• Implementation
• Tests
• RFC
• php-internals thread
• Reddit

Contains some code from #1935 since both are meant to create a coherent and consistent public API for developers to interact with variables together with the already existing functions like var_dump() or var_export().

[thunderer]

IMHO such things belong to userspace as descriptions of variable values usually depend on what level of detail is required. I created a small library that does exactly what this RFC proposes without adding yet another function to already bloated root namespace of PHP stdlib.

[nikic]

Closing here as the RFC has been declined.