PHP put the variable name in a string - php

Question

I have a function for dumping variables on the screen and what I'd like to do is to show the name of the variable next to the value of the variable, so it would output something like this:
function my_function($var) {
return '<pre>' . var_dump($var) . '</pre>';
}
$myVar = 'This is a variable';
echo my_function($var); // outputs on screen: myVar has value: This is a variable
$anotherVar = 'Something else';
echo my_function($anotherVar); // outputs on screen: anotherVar has value: Something else
How can I do this ?

Answer 1

PHP offers no simple way of doing this. The PHP developers never saw any reason why this should be neccesary.
You can however use a couple of workarounds found here:
Is there a way to get the name of a variable? PHP - Reflection and here: How to get a variable name as a string in PHP?

Answer 2

Probably, debug_backtrace() function in such case will be the most effective:
function my_function($var) {
$caller = debug_backtrace()[0];
$file = $caller['file'];
$lineno = $caller['line'];
$fp = fopen($file, 'r');
$line = "";
for ($i = 0; $i < $lineno; $i++) {
$line = fgets($fp);
}
$regex = '/'.__FUNCTION__.'\(([^)]*)\)/';
preg_match($regex, $line, $matches);
echo '<pre>'. $matches[1]. ": $var</pre>";
}
$anotherVar = 'Something else';
my_function($anotherVar);
// output: $anotherVar: Something else