Capture the result of var_dump to a string?

<?php
ob_start();
var_dump($someVar);
$result = ob_get_clean();
?>

credits: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/139474/how-can-i-capture-the-result-of-var-dump-to-a-string

Dump defined PHP vars

print date('m/d/Y h:i:s a', time());
print '<br />';

print print_r(array_keys(get_defined_vars()), 1);

print '<table border="1">';
foreach(get_defined_vars() as $k=>$f){
    print "<tr><td>{$k}</td><td>{$f}</td></tr>";
}
print '</table>';