vardumpa

Vardumpa is a command-line utility described within the Vardum software ecosystem. It provides a structured dump of the current values of variables and data structures to aid debugging and diagnostics. Vardumpa supports multiple output formats, including a compact human-readable form as well as machine-readable JSON and YAML, and offers options to control depth, filter fields, and format nested objects.

Typical use of vardumpa involves inspecting the state of a running program at breakpoints, capturing snapshots of data flows for logging, or exporting variable states for external analysis. It is designed to handle common data types such as primitives, arrays, maps, and user-defined objects, and includes mechanisms to represent shared or cyclic references without triggering infinite recursion.

History and development of vardumpa trace its origins to the early stages of the Vardum language project, where debugging tooling emphasized transparency and readability. Over time, community contributions and educational tutorials helped popularize vardumpa, leading to various forks and extensions that improve formatting, streaming capabilities, and integration with development environments.

Etymology and nomenclature reflect a blend of terminology from programming and tool naming conventions. The name vardumpa combines the root “var” (variable) with “dump,” plus a distinctive suffix that aligns with other tooling names in the Vardum ecosystem.

See also: var_dump, debugger, data serialization, JSON, YAML.