If you pass an array to the update_option it will automatically serialize it. you can later retrieve them back into an array like this.
$tempoptions = get_option("plugin-options"); if (!empty($tempoptions)) { foreach ($tempoptions as $key => $option) $options[$key] = $option; }
$tempoptions = get_option("plugin-options");
if (!empty($tempoptions)) {
foreach ($tempoptions as $key => $option)
$options[$key] = $option;
}
then do something like var_dump ($options$options
) this will show you the entire array.
I think they use the maybe_serialize/maybe_unserialize/is_serialized functions from the codex, but I never really looked into it. Just found them now. http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/maybe_serialize