How to use the PHP interactive shell

Question

I\'m using Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit and I want to use the PHP interactive shell:

php -a

But it doesn\'t seem to work very well, a lot of syntax

Answer 1

How about PsySH ?

A litle example :

psysh 
Psy Shell v0.7.2 (PHP 5.5.12-2ubuntu4.6 — cli) by Justin Hileman
>>> $toto='ejgf5d78gfmkzl'
=> "ejgf5d78gfmkzl"
>>> substr($toto,0,2)
=> "ej"