Get current PHP executable from within script?

Question

I want to run a PHP cli program from within PHP cli. On some machines where this will run, both php4 and php5 are installed. If I run the outer program as

Answer 1

You could use phpversion() to get the current version of PHP before you execute the "inner" script.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.phpversion.php

Answer 2

Unfortunately PHP_BINARY is returning the httpd binary (on windows XAMPP), so I'm back to using paths...

    if (defined('PHP_BINARY') && PHP_BINARY && in_array(PHP_SAPI, array('cli', 'cli-server')) && is_file(PHP_BINARY)) {
          return PHP_BINARY;
    } else if (strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3)) === 'WIN') {
        $paths = explode(PATH_SEPARATOR, getenv('PATH'));
        foreach ($paths as $path) {
            if (substr($path, strlen($path)-1)==DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR) {
                $path=substr($path, 0, strlen($path)-1);
            }
            if ( substr($path, strlen($path) - strlen('php')) == 'php' ) {
                $response=$path.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'php.exe';
                if (is_file($response)) {
                    return $response;
                }
            } else if ( substr($path, strlen($path) - strlen('php.exe')) == 'php.exe' ) {
                if (is_file($response)) {
                    return $response;
                }
            }                
        }
    } else {
        $paths = explode(PATH_SEPARATOR, getenv('PATH'));
        foreach ($paths as $path) {
            if (substr($path, strlen($path)-1)==DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR) {
                $path=substr($path, strlen($path)-1);
            }
            if ( substr($path, strlen($path) - strlen('php')) == 'php' ) {
                if (is_file($path)) {
                    return $path;
                }
                $response=$path.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'php';
                if (is_file($response)) {
                    return $response;
                }
            }               
        }
    }
    return null;

Answer 3

This answer was helpful for tracking down a php location: How to get the path of the PHP BIN from PHP?

It's also windows and linux friendly :)

Answer 4

I know this question is a bit old, but it came up while looking for a shorter way of doing this.

Unfortunately I can't find a shorter way, but this works pretty well and is multi OS/PHP version compatible.

$lookIn could probably be extended to include more common locations.

https://gist.github.com/cjsewell/39b60065ae2af677ceb1

Hope it helps someone

Answer 5

I think the bestconstant PHP_BINARY. With PHP 5.5.12

Answer 6

On my server I've php 5.3.14.

I've found a predefined constant: PHP_BIN_DIR

Then, supposing the file name of the executable file is always 'php', $php_cmd = PHP_BIN_DIR.'/php' point to my PHP executable file.