Running PHP code/scripts on the command line

Question

I just began learning PHP. I've installed php5 on Linux and wrote very simple code just to get going.

How can I run scripts? I tried using the -f option, but it works as a cat command and just spits out the code to standard output.

The interactive interpreter option works fine. Is a web browser the only way to execute a PHP script?

If you are here (from a search engine hit) looking for a way to ***run PHP source directly from the command line*** (like a Perl one-liner), then go to Stack Overflow question *[How can I execute PHP code from the command line?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9520090/how-can-i-execute-php-code-from-the-command-line/60621329#60621329)*. (It is the `-r` option) — Peter Mortensen, Oct 28 '21 at 18:23

score 46 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 06 '11 at 07:59

46

A simple:

php myScript.php

… should do the job.

If it is acting like cat, then you probably forgot to switch out of template mode and into script mode with <?php

answered Aug 06 '11 at 07:59

Quentin

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Tags seems to be the problem.I didn't know I had to put one there. – kaiseroskilo Aug 06 '11 at 08:09

score 23 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 13 '15 at 19:17

23

Shorter way for command line:

php -r 'echo "Hello "; echo "Jay";'
OR
php -r 'echo dirname("parent/child/reply") . "\n";'

answered Aug 13 '15 at 19:17

Jadeye

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score 14 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 14 '21 at 18:41

As already mentioned, you can execute your PHP with the following.

php myScript.php

If you wish to pass an argument(s), you can simply do so like this:

php myScript.php Apples

In your PHP file you can use this argument by accessing the $argv array like this:

<?php
    echo 'I like ' . $argv[1];
?>

The above would print our "I like Apples". Note the array index is 1 and not 0. 0 is used for script name. In this case $argv would be "myScript.php"

For more information, check out my blog post Running PHP from the Command Line - Basics.

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 27 '14 at 10:06

Actually, PHP's main purpose is to generate web pages, but there are at least two other options:

command line (CLI) script execution,
interactive shell - which is actually the variant of the previous option,

The first one can be achieved in many ways (eg. by giving proper permissions to the file and calling script by providing its URI, eg. ./index.php), the second one can be invoked by php -a command (as stated in the documentation mentioned above).

Running PHP code/scripts on the command line

4 Answers4

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