How to Debug Variables in Smarty like in PHP var_dump()

I have some variables inside a template and I don't know where I assigned them. I need to know what is inside a particular variable; for instance, say I have a variable in smarty called member. I tried with {debug} but it didn't work, and no popup was shown.

How can I output/debug smarty variables using something like var_dump() inside the templates?

You can use {php} tags

Method 1 (won't work in Smarty 3.1 or later):

{php}

$var =
$this->get_template_vars('var');
var_dump($var);

{/php}

Method 2:

{$var|@print_r}

Method 3:

{$var|@var_dump}

This should work:

{$var|@print_r}

or

{$var|@var_dump}

The @ is needed for arrays to make smarty run the modifier against the whole thing, otherwise it does it for each element.