How to add shebang #! with php script on linux?

Question

I'm having a little issue with adding shebang #! with my php script on RedHat linux. I have a small piece of test code with shebang added (I've tried different variations as well), but I get the following error message everytime I try to run the script.

Error msg:

-bash: script.php: command not found

Test script:

#!/bin/env php    
<?php echo "test"; ?>

Shebang #! variations:

#!/usr/bin/php
#!/usr/bin/env php

Answer 1

It should (for most systems) be #!/usr/bin/env php, but your error isn't related to that.

-bash: script.php: command not found

It says that script.php is not found.

If the problem was the shebang line then the error would say something like:

bash: script.php: /usr/env: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Presumably, you are typing script.php and the file is not in a directory on your $PATH or is not executable.

1. Make it executable: chmod +x script.php.
2. Type the path to it instead of just the filename, if it is in the current directory then: ./script.php.

Instead of 2, you can move/copy/symlink the file to somewhere listed in $PATH or modify the $PATH to include the directory containing the script.

Answer 2

If you script is not located in your /usr/local/bin and is executable, you have to prefix calling your script with php like this:

php myscrip.php

For shebangs, here is what I use:

Like this:

#!/usr/bin/php

or this:

#!/usr/bin/env php

Answer 3

Leaving here some little notes:

---

To use a php binary located inside the same folder.

As example a php7.2 executable copied from /usr/bin is in the same path along a hello script.

#!./php7.2
<?php

echo "Hello!"; 

To run it:

./hello

Which behave just as equal as:

./php7.2 hello

This give portability, but beware of system architectures, the php binary might not match the target platform.

---

Setting allowed memory from the hashbang:

We can set one INI entry from the hashbang line:

#!/usr/bin/php -d memory_limit=2048M
<?php
phpinfo();
exit;

Then to see if php had understood, using phpinfo():

./myphpProg | grep memory

Correct shell output should contain:

memory_limit => 2048M => 2048M

Doing the above is similar as this command line:

php -d memory_limit=2048M myphpProg.**php**

This is why we can set only one ini value in hashbangs, as php accept only one -d parameter at a time.