How to format var_export to php5.4 array syntax

For anyone looking for a more modern-day solution, use the Symfony var-exporter, also available as a standalone library on composer, but included in Symfony default.

composer require symfony/var-exporter

use Symfony\Component\VarExporter\VarExporter;

// ...

echo VarExporter::export($arr)

I had something similar laying around.

function var_export54($var, $indent="") {
    switch (gettype($var)) {
        case "string":
            return '"' . addcslashes($var, "\\\$\"\r\n\t\v\f") . '"';
        case "array":
            $indexed = array_keys($var) === range(0, count($var) - 1);
            $r = [];
            foreach ($var as $key => $value) {
                $r[] = "$indent    "
                     . ($indexed ? "" : var_export54($key) . " => ")
                     . var_export54($value, "$indent    ");
            }
            return "[\n" . implode(",\n", $r) . "\n" . $indent . "]";
        case "boolean":
            return $var ? "TRUE" : "FALSE";
        default:
            return var_export($var, TRUE);
    }
}

It's not overly pretty, but maybe sufficient for your case.

Any but the specified types are handled by the regular var_export. Thus for single-quoted strings, just comment out the string case.

With https://github.com/zendframework/zend-code :

<?php
use Zend\Code\Generator\ValueGenerator;
$generator = new ValueGenerator($myArray, ValueGenerator::TYPE_ARRAY_SHORT);
$generator->setIndentation('  '); // 2 spaces
echo $generator->generate();

I realize this question is ancient; but search leads me here. I didn't care for full iterations or using json_decode, so here's a preg_replace-based var_export twister that gets the job done.

function var_export_short($data, $return=true)
{
    $dump = var_export($data, true);

    $dump = preg_replace('#(?:\A|\n)([ ]*)array \(#i', '[', $dump); // Starts
    $dump = preg_replace('#\n([ ]*)\),#', "\n$1],", $dump); // Ends
    $dump = preg_replace('#=> \[\n\s+\],\n#', "=> [],\n", $dump); // Empties

    if (gettype($data) == 'object') { // Deal with object states
        $dump = str_replace('__set_state(array(', '__set_state([', $dump);
        $dump = preg_replace('#\)\)$#', "])", $dump);
    } else { 
        $dump = preg_replace('#\)$#', "]", $dump);
    }

    if ($return===true) {
        return $dump;
    } else {
        echo $dump;
    }
}

I've tested it on several arrays and objects. Not exhaustively by any measure, but it seems to be working fine. I've made the output "tight" by also compacting extra line-breaks and empty arrays. If you run into any inadvertent data corruption using this, please let me know. I haven't benchmarked this against the above solutions yet, but I suspect it'll be a good deal faster. Enjoy reading your arrays!