Sometimes, when you are debugging a PHPUnit test, you need to display some variable or another information in the console.
To do it, you can use this trick:
fwrite(STDERR, print_r($myOddVariable, TRUE));
This will show you the $myOddVariable in the console when you exeucte the test.
Remember, this is a temporary trick, and you should not use this in the final test.
Seen at Stack Overflow.