I’ve discovered two things about command line PHP today. I’ll share them here just in case you missed them too.
First, the “-f” parameter is optional. I’m not sure when the change happened, but I’m pretty sure back when I started using it, it was required. Now, instead of “php -f some.php” you can run just “php some.php”.
Second, there is now an interactive PHP mode! This is something I wanted for years. Prior to PHP I had experience with Perl and Python, both of which have interactive modes. With PHP I had to resort to a gadzillion of tiny files with snippets of code. Now I don’t have to anymore. Just run “php -a” and type away.
Have a look at PHP command line options manual page. Maybe you’ll discover something else.