I'm not much of a programmer, PHP is where I'm comfortable. And sometimes I find that I need to do things, such as arrange files or rename files on a mass scale on my computer. And I think I could do this with PHP but I can't of course.
So I was curious, is there a way I could run PHP files as kind of exe files.
I'll probably get flamed for this question, but yeah...
EDIT: Fairly important point, using Windows.
Sure, just add #!/path/to/php to the top of the file, add the code in tags, and run it as a shell script.
Works fine - the php binary you use is either the cgi one or the purpose built CLI version.
just use php.exe (put it in your path) and the name of the php file you want to execute
It's not as bad as you put it. PHP may be a very good tool for string related stuff like parsing, renaming etc. Especially if you know PHP.
To use php as script you should add #!/path/to/php as first line and set execution permissions on unixoid systems. In windows you can simply assign the php file ending with your php cli exe so you can click on them or use the script with the "start" command in the windows shell. But make sure that you write your scripts in a way that it is sensible to the current working directory. It may be different to what you might expect sometimes.
maybe php is not the right tool to doing this and it's about time to learn another language...use this chance to expand your programming horizion
to be able to execute php files with double click, just like normal programs, go to the command line, then type
ftype php_script "C:\path\to\php.exe" "%1"
assoc .php=php_script
See the .reg file in this gist, it makes it possible to use .php files exactly like .bat files, e.g. my_script.php foo bar baz
Don't forget to edit paths to suit your setup.
http://www.appcelerator.com/products/download/ Still use html & css as a desktop app and now has support for php.
PHP based web apps like Wordpress and Mediawiki I think uses php to setup and configure itself. Just give IIS proper read/write rights and you can make a simple web app that does massive renaming, etc.. PHP doesn't have to always be used for writing out html.
Download Wamp Server, install it. Once thats done, add the path to the php.exe to your PATH settings. You can do this by going to control panel->system->change settings->advanced->environment variables. Edit the PATH, add a ';' to the end of the line and then past the path to the php.exe. This is on Vista, it might be different on XP or Windows 7.
My path looks like this after: C:\Sun\SDK\jdk\bin;C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.0
Once thats done, you'll be able to execute a php file from the command line. You could create shortcuts too.
C:\Users\Garth Michel>php test.php
This is a test
C:\Users\Garth Michel>
I used php for years as a scripting language before I even bothered to use it as a web programming language.