Outputting an array with print_r()

Sometimes when debugging your code it’s useful to inspect the entire contents of an array. However, usingprint() or echo() on an array isn’t much help:

<?php

$directors = array( "Kawser", "Zaman", "Sohel", "Linkon" );

// Displays "Array"
echo $directors;
<pre>?>

To display an entire array, use the print_r() function instead. Here’s an example that creates an indexed array and an associative array, then displays the contents of both arrays using print_r():

<?php
$directors = array( "Sania", "Nigat", "Parvin", "GM" );

$movie = array( "title" => "Rear Window",
"director" => "Alfred Hitchcock",
"year" => 1954 );

echo '<h2>$directors:</h2><pre>';
print_r( $directors );
echo '</pre><h2>$movie:</h2><pre>';
print_r( $movie );
echo "</pre>";
?>

The above code produces the following output:

$directors:

Array
(
[0] => Alfred Hitchcock
[1] => Stanley Kubrick
[2] => Martin Scorsese
[3] => Fritz Lang
)

$movie:

Array
(
[title] => Rear Window
[director] => Alfred Hitchcock
[year] => 1954
)