Running CLI php script with execute bit

Question

This has been bugging me slightly.

I know you can do

php foo.php

or

php -f foo.php

Is there no way to just launch a script with the execute bit set

./foo.php

Given the folowing:

#!/usr/bin/php

<?php 
exit('hello');

I get "Could not open input file" or " bad interpreter: No such file or directory" depending on if there's whitespace after "bin/php".

@Subdigger Yup. Does this work for you? I'm not sure if I'm trying to force it to do something it's not meant to. — Greg
– Greg, Commented Aug 2, 2011 at 11:56

Martin Tournoij · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-02 12:18:57Z

7

Instead of #!/usr/bin/php, using #!/usr/bin/env php is a better solution. This will look up the PHP binary in the PATH environment variable. This is much more robust & crossplatform. BSD for example installs PHP in /usr/local/bin/php.

Further, you will need to make sure this is the first line, and that the script has the executable bit set, to set it for everyone (Generally OK) use: chmod a+x script.php

Also make sure you have the CLI SAPI enabled. Run php -v top verify, it should show something like:

[~]% php -v
PHP 5.3.3 (cli) (built: Jul 22 2010 16:21:30)
Copyright (c) 1997-2010 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies

answered Aug 2, 2011 at 12:18

Martin Tournoij

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Jacek Konieczny · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-02 12:39:54Z

5

Check if you have nothing before '#!', like an UTF-8 BOM
Check if you don't have anything at the end of the line, like CR (\r) befor the final LF (\n). The CR goes there if you write the file in Windows with windows line endings (CR LF) and may be interpreted as a part of the interpreter path.

answered Aug 2, 2011 at 12:39

Jacek Konieczny

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Niko Kiirala · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-02 12:14:37Z

3

The example code you've given seems OK and works for me (I added the the closing ?> though)

If you can run the file with /usr/bin/php foo.php there's something weird going on. Just a wild guess, but maybe you text editor leaves a BOM (byte order mark) at the beginning of the file, so that the #! aren't the very first two bytes in that file. (you can find out by doing hexdump -C foo.php | head)

answered Aug 2, 2011 at 12:14

Niko Kiirala

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user7675 · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-02 12:30:49Z

2

From the php(1) manpage:

TIPS

You can use a shebang line to automatically invoke php from scripts. Only the CLI version of PHP will ignore such a first line as shown below:
#!/bin/php
<?php
// your script
?>

So, the shebang method does work. I'm getting ": No such file or directory" if I set line endings to something other than "unix" in Vim. Are you using DOS line endings in your script?

answered Aug 2, 2011 at 12:30

user7675

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