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

If you start "php -a" and see "Interactive mode enabled" instead of "Interactive shell", then your copy of php was likely compiled without readline support, and there is no interactive shell.

As far as I know, Windows copies of PHP are all compiled without readline support. This makes the "-a" option worthless in Windows (at least to me).

"php -a" is supposed to work like this (output from a linux copy of php in this case):

$ php -a
Interactive shell

php > echo 5+8;
13
php > exit
$

"php -a" in a Windows copy of PHP is not an interactive shell, and so effectively works the same as leaving off the "-a" option. Use F6 or CTRL+Z to type the EOF character to finish the script (appears as ^Z):

C:\>php -a
Interactive mode enabled


^Z
13
C:\>

Leave off the "-a" and you get essentially the same results (minus the text "Interactive mode enabled":

C:\>php

^Z
13
C:\>

If you use "php -a" and get the text "Interactive mode enabled" and don't get the output for cli.prompt (usually "php >"), then you should check your php version (with "php -v") to make sure it is at least 5.1, and your php modules (with "php -m") to make sure the "readline" module is listed.