No output from PHP interactive on Windows

Question

I\'m running php interactively from xampp (5.4.7) on my Win 7 machine and cannot get any output from the window. I searched around various solutions and nothing so far has

Answer 1

The first line I type after entering php -a is slightly different to yours:

The nuisance is that it returns to the Windows command prompt and you have to keep typing php -a and before you can type more.

To save a bit of typing I created a shortcut, right-clicked it, opened its Properties dialog and entered the following command in the Target text box:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k "php -a"

This shortcut opens a PHP prompt in interactive mode. Alternatively, this one starts in interactive mode and lists the PHP switches:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k "php -h & php -a"