Running PHP script from the command line

You should check your server configuration files. Look for lines that start with LoadModule php... There probably are configuration files/directories named mods or something like that. Start from there.

You could also check output from php -r 'phpinfo();' | grep php and compare lines to phpinfo(); from web server.

To run php interactively:

(So you can paste/write code in the console.)

php -a

To make it parse a file and output to the console:

php -f file.php

Parse a file and output to another file:

php -f file.php > results.html

Do you need something else?

To run only a small part, one line or like, you can use:

php -r '$x = "Hello World"; echo "$x\n";'

If you are running Linux then do man php at the console.

If you need/want to run PHP through fpm (FastCGI Process Manager), use cli fcgi:

SCRIPT_NAME="file.php" SCRIP_FILENAME="file.php" REQUEST_METHOD="GET" cgi-fcgi -bind -connect "/var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock"

Where /var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock is your php-fpm socket file.

On SUSE Linux, there are two different configuration files for PHP: one for Apache, and one for CLI (command line interface). In the /etc/php5/ directory, you will find an "apache2" directory and a "cli" directory. Each has a "php.ini" file. The files are for the same purpose (PHP configuration), but apply to the two different ways of running PHP. These files, among other things, load the modules PHP uses.

If your OS is similar, then these two files are probably not the same. Your Apache php.ini is probably loading the German module, while the the CLI php.ini isn't. When the module was installed (auto or manual), it probably only updated the Apache php.ini file.

You could simply copy the Apache php.ini file over into the cli directory to make the CLI environment exactly like the Apache environment.

Or, you could find the line that loads the German module in the Apache file and copy/paste just it to the CLI file.

I was looking for a resolution to this issue in Windows, and it seems to be that if you don't have the environment variables ok, you need to put the complete directory. For example, with a file in the same directory as PHP:

F:\myfolder\php\php.exe -f F:\myfolder\php\script.php