What is AddType application/x-httpd-php-source

Solution 1:

The AddType directive should only affect the clients interpretation of what your sending it. A common one that is used is text/html which most clients will readily accept and interpret for what you want. Different browsers like I.E. Firefox and Chrome can sometimes interpret these headers differently.

A corollary command is AddHandler which affects how the server interprets the scripts.

Your question is a bit difficult to understand. Are you stating that when you use AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .php .php3 .php4 .php5 .php6 that you can see the actual PHP code itself rather than the processed HTML, but with AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php it works?

Solution 2:

You should only add this directive to .phps or whatever name you have to php source files you want shown with syntax highlighting, not the ones you want interpreted. If you want the .php{3,4,5,6} to work normally, add it to the correct handler x-httpd-php. There's no way to assign the same extension to both handlers and have it work.