In what ways can tracing or tracking function calls be utilized in PHP development to improve code understanding and maintenance?

Tracing or tracking function calls in PHP development can help developers understand the flow of their code, identify bugs or performance issues, and maintain the codebase more effectively. By logging function calls and their parameters, developers can easily trace the execution path of their code and troubleshoot any issues that arise.

function traceFunctionCalls($functionName, $parameters) {
    file_put_contents('function_calls.log', date('Y-m-d H:i:s') . ' - ' . $functionName . '(' . implode(', ', $parameters) . ')' . PHP_EOL, FILE_APPEND);
}

function exampleFunction($param1, $param2) {
    traceFunctionCalls(__FUNCTION__, func_get_args());
    // Function logic here
}

exampleFunction('value1', 'value2');