Prevent comment appearing in output when including php code - php

Question

I have the following at the beginning of my callable PHP scripts (Example: mytest.php)
#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
This works exactly as hoped when called from the command line: the opening line is interpreted by the shell and PHP is called accordingly without any output to the terminal.
But if I do:
include('mytest.php') ;
in some other script, then that comment line gets output to the terminal (or, worse, to a web page). This looks like a bug to me since PHP should also interpret # as a comment, but in any case I would love to avoid the extra line of output. Looking for a way to make that comment line actually be ignored within include() ... or what suggestions to avoid the scenario?
> php --version
PHP 7.4.3-4ubuntu2.17 (cli) (built: Jan 10 2023 15:37:44) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.4.3-4ubuntu2.17, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies
with Xdebug v3.0.4, Copyright (c) 2002-2021, by Derick Rethans

Answer 1

#!/usr/bin/env php
Is NOT a comment, it's a shebang telling the kernel how to interpret the contents of the file.
If you want to "catch" the output of a file you can use ob_start, ob_get_contents() and ob_end_clean like so:
<?php
ob_start(); // turn on output buffering
include "mytest.php";
$contents = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean(); // turn off output buffering
Then you can examine and filter the "comment" out of the output.
However, I'm not actually able to reproduce the issue on my computer (php v8), but that is how you can catch any output generated by the included PHP file.