How to create an array from output of var_dump in PHP?

Question

How can I parse the output of var_dump in PHP to create an array?

Answer 1

Use var_export if you want a representation which is also valid PHP code

$a = array (1, 2, array ("a", "b", "c"));
$dump=var_export($a, true);
echo $dump;

will display

array (
 0 => 1,
 1 => 2,
 2 => 
 array (
   0 => 'a',
   1 => 'b',
   2 => 'c',
 ),
)

To turn that back into an array, you can use eval, e.g.

eval("\$foo=$dump;");
var_dump($foo);

Not sure why you would want to do this though. If you want to store a PHP data structure somewhere and then recreate it later, check out serialize() and unserialize() which are more suited to this task.

Answer 2

I had a similar problem : a long runing script produced at the end a vardump of large array. I had to parse it back somehow for further analyzis. My solution was like this:

cat log.stats  | 
  sed 's/\[//g' | 
  sed 's/\]//g' | 
  sed -r 's/int\(([0-9]+)\)/\1,/g' | 
  sed 's/\}/\),/g' | 
  sed -r 's/array\([0-9]+\) \{/array(/g' > 
  log.stats.php

Answer 3

You can't. var_dump just outputs text but doesn't return anything.