Originally posted from https://web.archive.org/web/20171207214530/http://www.molotovbliss.com/debugging-tips-and-tricks-with-magento-commerce
Zend_Debug::dump
Use Zend_Debug::dump($foo);
instead of using var_dump($foo);
or print_r($foo);
it is essentially the same, just a wrapper with pre HTML tag for formatting and escaping of special characters.