Get the name of the variable (instead of it's value)

var_name.php

<?php

/*
 * This is just a simple function that dumps the name of the variable(s) 
 * being inspected instead of the values as var_dump() does.
 */

function var_name()
{
	$bt = debug_backtrace();
	$src = file($bt[0]["file"]);
	return preg_replace('~(.*var_name\(([^)]+)\).*)~', "$2", $src[$bt[0]['line'] - 1]);
}


$time = microtime(TRUE);

$var = 'hello';
$foo = $var;

// Simple
print var_name($var). "\n";

// More
print var_name($var, $foo). "\n";

// Trouble
print var_name($foo). "\n" . var_name($var) . "\n";

// Fine again
print var_name($foo). "\n"
	. var_name($var) . "\n";

print (microtime(TRUE) - $time) . " ms\n";