Can you render a PHP file into a variable?

Question

If I have a hello.php file like this:

Hello, !

I would like to do something like this in some php code:

Answer 1

As Gumbo said you have to check for the $file variable, its a subtle bug that has already bitten me. I would use func_get_arg( i ) and have no variables at all, and a minor thing, i would use require.

function renderPhpToString( )
{
    if( is_array( func_get_arg(1) ) ) {
        extract( func_get_arg(1) );
    }
    ob_start();
    require func_get_arg( 0 );
    return ob_get_clean();

}