Question

I’ve got a simple script with a lot of formulas like so:

$formula = 12 *( $C + ($D * $A) + $H ) + $B * ((($F+$J)*$M/$L)+(($G+$K)*$N/$L)+$E);

Is there any easy way to output the values to debug the equation? Like:

12 * ( 15 (44 * 11) + 33) + 3 * [...]

Or I have to to do it the usual way:

echo "12" . '* ('. $C .' + ' [...]

I’ve got lot of these formulas, so I’m looking for some shortcut to debug them.

Answer 1

You should be able to surround your formula with double quotes like so:

$formula = "12 *( $C + ($D * $A) + $H ) + $B * ((($F+$J)*$M/$L)+(($G+$K)*$N/$L)+$E)";

That will allow you to echo $formula and all of the variables should be converted to their actual values.

As far as a way to do that without copy/paste or inserting the quotes, no. PHP is going to evaluate all the stuff on the right side of the = so that $formula ends up (without the quotes) with just the final result. If you want the result and the “debug” output you could do this:

$formula = 12 *( $C + ($D * $A) + $H ) + $B * ((($F+$J)*$M/$L)+(($G+$K)*$N/$L)+$E);
$formulaDebug = "12 *( $C + ($D * $A) + $H ) + $B * ((($F+$J)*$M/$L)+(($G+$K)*$N/$L)+$E)";

echo $formulaDebug . " = " . $formula . PHP_EOL;

Then you’ll get both the answer and the debug output.