PHP interactive shell, auto echo and a new line

Question

Greetings fellow programmers!

Is there a way to get PHPs interactive shell, php -a , to behave more like Rails console or the console in Chrome? I have looked through the flags for the php-command, but no dice.

What I get:

php > $a = 0;
php > $a;
php > echo $a;
0php > 

What I want

php > $a = 0;
0
php > $a;
0
php > echo $a;
0
php > 

Answer 1

You have at least three possibilities to solve this problem:

1. Manually add PHP_EOL to all your echo : echo $a . PHP_EOL echo $a . PHP_EOL ;
2. Introduce your idea on official php ideas wiki and wait until someone implement it.
3. Learn php git workflow for external contributors , create needed functionality and send the patch to developers.

Answer 2

As of 2022, PsySH seems to be a modern maintained valid solution for the asked question:

Psy Shell v0.11.5 (PHP 7.4.3 — cli) by Justin Hileman
>>> $a = 0
=> 0

>>> $a
=> 0

>>> echo $a
0⏎

All the more:

• as one can see above, semi-colon is optional
• the output is slightly different for an echo expression
• a single eval statement dropped anywhere in a code base is enough to set a breakpoint powered by this REPL

Answer 3

Check into Boris , described as "PHP's missing REPL ". echo and print still require manual newlines, but naked expressions are evaluated and pretty-printed:

[1] boris> $a = 0;
// 0
[2] boris> $a;
// 0
[3] boris> echo $a;
0[4] boris>