How do I set the memory_limit for PHP CLI when using xampp

Question

I have tried setting the limit in php.ini but I always get the same error:

Allowed memory size of 262144 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 341351 bytes) in Unknown

Answer 1

As php-cli has a different ini file, this often leads to misconfiguration.

What we can do, for a «unix shebang» php shell script, is to set ini keys on the fly directly on the shebang line, like so:

#!/usr/bin/php -d memory_limit=512M

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

./myphpProg | grep memory

Correct shell output should contain:

memory_limit => 512M => 512M

To better understand shebangs scripting, doing the above is similar as running the same file from the interpreter:

php -d memory_limit=512M myphpProg