I needed to log a nested array to a file. To do this I needed to convert the array to a single line. After some searching I found improved_var_export() that converts a PHP array/object to a single line textual representation. I cleaned up some of the formatting and this is the result.

function flat_var_export($variable, $return = false) {
    if ($variable instanceof stdClass) {
        $result = '(object) ' . flat_var_export(get_object_vars($variable), true);
    } elseif (is_array($variable)) {
        $array = array();
        foreach ($variable as $key => $value) {
            $array[] = var_export($key, true) . ' => ' . flat_var_export($value, true);
        }
        $result = 'array(' . implode(', ', $array) . ')';
    } else {
        $result = var_export($variable, true);
    }

    if ($return) {
        return $result;
    } else {
        print $result;
    }
}