phan/var_representation_polyfill

Polyfill for var_representation: convert a variable to a string in a way that fixes the shortcomings of var_export

0.1.4 2026-01-28 23:32 UTC

Requires

• php: ^7.2.0|^8.0.0
• ext-tokenizer: *

Requires (Dev)

• phan/phan: ^5.4.1
• phpunit/phpunit: ^8.5.0

Suggests

• ext-var_representation: For best performance

Provides

• ext-var_representation: *

MIT

• Tyson Andre

• var_export
• var_representation

README

var_representation_polyfill is a polyfill for https://pecl.php.net/var_representation

This provides a polyfill for the function var_representation(mixed $value, int $flags = 0): string, which converts a variable to a string in a way that fixes the shortcomings of var_export()

See the var_representation PECL documentation for more details

Forked from https://github.com/TysonAndre/var_representation_polyfill for PHP 8.5 support.

Installation

composer require phan/var_representation_polyfill

Usage

// uses short arrays, and omits array keys if array_is_list() would be true
php > echo var_representation(['a','b']);
[
  'a',
  'b',
]

// can dump everything on one line.
php > echo var_representation(['a', 'b', 'c'], VAR_REPRESENTATION_SINGLE_LINE);
['a', 'b', 'c']

php > echo var_representation("uses double quotes: \$\"'\\\n");
"uses double quotes: \$\"'\\\n"

// Can disable the escaping of control characters as of polyfill version 0.1.0
// (e.g. if the return value needs to be escaped again)
php > echo var_representation("has\nnewlines", VAR_REPRESENTATION_UNESCAPED);
'has
newlines'
php > echo json_encode("uses single quotes:\0\r\n\$\"'\\");
"uses single quotes:\u0000\r\n$\"'\\"
php > echo json_encode(var_representation("uses single quotes:\0\r\n\$\"'\\",
                                          VAR_REPRESENTATION_UNESCAPED));
"'uses single quotes:\u0000\r\n$\"\\'\\\\'"