Is PHP $argv limited to 9 paramers on Windows?

Question

Running the following script in PHP 5.5.4 CLI on Win7 32bit

php -r "print_r($argv);" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

I can see that only 8 arguments are actually parsed:

Array
(
    [0] => -
    [1] => 1
    [2] => 2
    [3] => 3
    [4] => 4
    [5] => 5
    [6] => 6
    [7] => 7
)

Does Windows or PHP limit the number of command line args to 8/ total 9?

Update:

~~Works as expected on same PC with PHP 5.5.7 -> so at least on Win7 this is a PHP-specific problem.~~

The behaviour changes depending on if the script is run from the php folder or if php is found via path. A procmon trace seems to indicate that the problem is with Windows as- even before the PHP.exe image is being loaded- a different number of parameters is passed:

php.exe Process Start       SUCCESS Parent PID: 9088, Command line: "\Program Files\php\php"  -r "print_r($argv);" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, Current directory: C:\
php.exe Process Start       SUCCESS Parent PID: 9088, Command line: "\program files\php\php"  -r "print_r($argv);" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14, Current directory: C:\
php.exe Process Start       SUCCESS Parent PID: 9088, Command line: php  -r "print_r($argv);" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14, Current directory: C:\Program Files\php\

All parameters only seem to be available if PHP is NOT taken from the path.

Probably not. I think, the command line interpreter in windows, that is limited. — peterh
Passing more than 8 parameters works fine for my PHP 5.4.12 installation on Windows, maybe it's a version thing. Which version are you on? — Oldskool

Rob Baillie Rob Baillie · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-12T12:11:13

Kind of, on some Windows environments. To get more than 9 parameters on Windows XP you need to "shift" the parameters in your batch file.

I can't find any reference to this command on versions above XP, so it may be that this issue goes away with later versions of Windows.

A comment on PHP.NET covers it here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.php#56846

To pass more than 9 arguments to your php-script on Windows, you can use the 'shift'-command in a batch file. After using 'shift', %1 becomes %0, %2 becomes %1 and so on - so you can fetch argument 10 etc.

Here's an example - hopefully ready-to-use - batch file:

foo.bat:

@echo off

:init_arg
set args=

:get_arg
shift
if "%0"=="" goto :finish_arg
set args=%args% %0 goto :get_arg

:finish_arg

set php=C:\path\to\php.exe
set ini=C:\path\to\php.ini
%php% -c %ini%
foo.php %args%

Usage on commandline: foo -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -foo -bar

A print_r($argv) will give you all of the passed arguments.

Is PHP $argv limited to 9 paramers on Windows?

1 Answers