Result of var_dump($_POST['pass_field']) is a bunch of dashes?

Question

Greetings,

I am trying to debug a login script. So I decided to use var_ dump to print out the password. But for some reason say If I type in 'BOSTON' rather then printing 'BOSTON' it prints out six dashes, 1 dash for each character. I haven't encountered it like this before. I'm sure i'm missing something. I tried ob_ start() var_ dump then ob_ get_clean but it doesn't print anything that way. I thank the community in advance.

 var_dump($_POST['pass_field']); // password BOSTON

output:

 string(6) "------"

Answer 1

I would use the print_r function on the $_POST array to see if the pass_field key is set to BOSTON

print_r($_POST);

If you want to use ob_start(), you must get the content then end it

ob_start();
var_dump($_POST['pass_field'];
print_r($_POST);
$content = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

echo $content;

I hope that helps.