How to clear previously echoed items in PHP

Question

In php, is there any way to clear/remove all previously echoed or printed items?

For example:

Answer 1

If it is debug output and program status information you are worried about maybe trigger_error may be nearer to what you need, such as:

trigger_error ("Attempting to load report #{$report_id}.", E_USER_NOTICE);

When your script is in production it wont show up any errors as generally they are disabled or logged. It's also best to do fatal errors this way with E_USER_ERROR rather than using die ().

ob_start ();
require ($filename);
$html = ob_get_clean ();

The above will also include a file and give you its contents as a string.

Caveat: Ditching the buffer will also ditch any error messages thrown up, making debugging (potentially) a nightmare.