diff --git a/lib/datalib.php b/lib/datalib.php
index a41945b4ce7..91d97bd9463 100644
--- a/lib/datalib.php
+++ b/lib/datalib.php
@@ -1957,19 +1957,26 @@ function count_login_failures($mode, $username, $lastlogin) {
 /// GENERAL HELPFUL THINGS  ///////////////////////////////////
 
 /**
- * Dump a given object's information in a PRE block.
+ * Dumps a given object's information for debugging purposes
  *
- * Mostly just used for debugging.
+ * When used in a CLI script, the object's information is written to the standard
+ * error output stream. When used in a web script, the object is dumped to a
+ * pre-formatted block with the "notifytiny" CSS class.
  *
  * @param mixed $object The data to be printed
- * @return void OUtput is echo'd
+ * @return void output is echo'd
  */
 function print_object($object) {
-    echo '<pre class="notifytiny">';
+
     // we may need a lot of memory here
     raise_memory_limit(MEMORY_EXTRA);
-    echo s(print_r($object, true));
-    echo '</pre>';
+
+    if (CLI_SCRIPT) {
+        fwrite(STDERR, print_r($object, true));
+        fwrite(STDERR, PHP_EOL);
+    } else {
+        echo html_writer::tag('pre', s(print_r($object, true)), array('class' => 'notifytiny'));
+    }
 }
 
 /**