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?
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
Shorter way for command line:
php -r 'echo "Hello "; echo "Jay";'
OR
php -r 'echo dirname("parent/child/reply") . "\n";'
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.
Actually, PHP's main purpose is to generate web pages, but there are at least two other options:
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).
-roption)