php make it say null
<p>An example of where I have a variable and its value is "null".However, when I echo it out, it shows as nothing (because its null).</p>

<p>test.php:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;?php

$a=null;
echo 'start'.$a.'end';

?&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>Is there a way to make this output 'startnullend' when the file test.php is requested in firefox?  var_dump does not work, nor does print_r for some reason.  The easy way is to IF test for null and then output null using if statement, but is there a different way?</p>
