How do you get variable name of argument? 1

[thenewa2x]

Is there a way to the actual variable name that was used to pass to the function (if any)?

Here's an example of what I mean:

$variable_name = "Some value.";

some_function( $variable_name );

function some_function ( $arg )
{
   // Here is where I would probably call a function to
   // get the actual name of the variable used to set
   // $arg when it was called.
   $name = get_var_name( $arg );

   // Print actual name:
   print( $name );
}

[tt]some_function()[/tt] should have printed "variable_name".

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[sleipnir214]

Why would you need to know that? It's not important.

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[thenewa2x]

Any useful information would be appreciated.

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[sleipnir214]

No, I'm serious. I've been programming for more than two decades in any of two or three dozen languages, and I've never needed that information.

Of what could that information be?


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[SimonSellick]

Are you trying to behave differently depending on what variable was passed - perhaps to modify the value of the variable? If so, that is better achieved by a pass-by-reference argument, which is really easy in PHP - just precede the formal argument name in the function definiton with '&', for example:

function func(&arg)
{
  arg++;
}
.
.
.
v := 0;
echo(v); // v shows 0
func(v);
echo(v); // v shows 1
.
.
.

 

[thenewa2x]

What I want is for debugging purposes. I want to be able to dynamically tell the programmer what variable has what problems.

I tell the problems but I don't know how to get the name of the variables that they are using without adding extra work for them.

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[SimonSellick]

The simple way is to put the debug code in-line, such as:

echo("var1=$var1 var2=$var2");

The double quotes cause the variable names to be 'expanded' into their values.

I guess you could send the string to a function but I'm not sure when PHP does the variable expansion - at parse or execution time.

 

[sleipnir214]

To the best of my knowledge, that information is not available in PHP without changing either the behavior of PHP or the way you write your scripts.

Take a look at the Advanced PHP Debugger:

http://www.php.net/apd

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[DRJ478]

Zend has a quite useful IDE (Studio) which contains the Zend debugger. It is actually very helpful in debugging code.
You can download it as a trial and use the capabilities for a limited time. For a professional setup the expense is worth it if you do a lot of debugging.

 

[thenewa2x]

Ok, thanks for your help guys.

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