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Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2025 00:04:42 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Pre-RFC: dd() and dump() functions for PHP core
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From: jnv@jnvsor.net (Jonathan Vollebregt)

On 6/17/25 9:54 PM, Braunson Yager wrote:
> I'd like to gauge interest in adding two debugging functions to PHP core: dd() and dump().

Going out of your way to deliberately conflict with two very popular 
userland function names is a bad idea.

> *Enhanced Features Over Existing Solutions
> *- Native performance (no userland overhead)
> - Stack trace integration
> - Memory usage reporting
> - Execution timing (potentially)
> - Better CLI formatting

All of these except the native performance already exist in userland 
dumpers, and if you're counting xdebug's var_dump implementation then 
you can scratch off native performance too.

> *Why Core vs Userland?
> *Similar to how var_dump() provides basic introspection, these functions 
> would offer enhanced debugging capabilities that benefit the entire 
> ecosystem, not just framework users.

The primary feature of these dumpers isn't "Enhanced debugging 
capabilities" it's pretty printing in HTML output. Color highlighting 
and unfolding are nice bonuses but they aren't present in other 
languages by default either (eg. Rust's Debug trait)

Xdebug var-dumper and kint are all framework agnostic (And neither 
xdebug nor kint even require composer) so I don't understand how the 
existing solutions "just" benefit framework users.

If anything I'd say core PHP already has too many dump functions: 
print_r and var_dump do essentially the same thing, with minor 
variations in debug_zval_dump and var_export

- Jonathan