PHP capture print/require output in variable

Question

Is it possible to add the output of print() to a variable?

I have the following situation:

I have a php file which looks something like this:

Answer 1

You can capture output with the ob_start() and ob_get_clean() functions:

ob_start();
print("abc");
$output = ob_get_clean();
// $output contains everything outputed between ob_start() and ob_get_clean()

Alternatively, note that you can also return values from an included file, like from functions:

a.php:

return "";

b.php:

$html = include "a.php"; // $html will contain ""