Problems with a PHP shell script: "Could not open input file" - php

Question

Ok, I am trying to create an email logger, that uses a PHP shell script. I have set up CPanel to pipe emails to my script. I am sure this is all configured properly. However I am having problems with the script, well any script for that matter when running it from the shell.
here is an example.
#!/usr/local/bin/php –q
<?php
/* Read the message from STDIN */
$fd = fopen("php://stdin", "r");
$email = ""; // This will be the variable holding the data.
while (!feof($fd)) {
$email .= fread($fd, 1024);
}
fclose($fd);
/* Saves the data into a file */
$fdw = fopen("mail.txt", "w+");
fwrite($fdw, $email);
fclose($fdw);
/* Script End */
?>
Real simple, right? Read from STDIN and write to a file...I thought something was wrong, not able to read STDIN for some reason. Hosting provider allows it, allow_url_open and allow_url_include are both on.
When executing the script via SSH I get the following error:
Could not open input file: âq
So once again I thought that was the script telling me, that is could not read from STDIN
So I tried just a simple script.
#!/usr/local/bin/php –q
<?php
echo 'Hello World';
?>
Same thing:
Could not open input file: âq
So it appears that the PHP program is telling me it is unable to open the script? The script is located in $HOME/mail/forward (CHMOD 755) and the script itself is CHMOD 755, as well the file mail.txt is CHMOD 755
I am really stumped on this.

Answer 1

I just experienced this issue and it was because I was trying to run a script from the wrong directory.. doh! It happens to the best of us.

Answer 2

Have you tried:
#!/usr/local/bin/php
I.e. without the -q part? That's what the error message "Could not open input file: -q" means. The first argument to php if it doesn't look like an option is the name of the PHP file to execute, and -q is CGI only.
EDIT: A couple of (non-related) tips:
You don't need to terminate the last block of PHP with ?>. In fact, it is often better not to.
When executed on the command line, PHP defines the global constant STDIN to fopen("php://stdin", "r"). You can use that instead of opening "php://stdin" a second time: $fd = STDIN;

Answer 3

I landed up on this page when searching for a solution for “Could not open input file” error. Here's my 2 cents for this error.
I faced this same error while because I was using parameters in my php file path like this:
/usr/bin/php -q /home/**/public_html/cron/job.php?id=1234
But I found out that this is not the proper way to do it. The proper way of sending parameters is like this:
/usr/bin/php -q /home/**/public_html/cron/job.php id=1234
Just replace the "?" with a space " ".

Answer 4

Windows Character Encoding Issue
I was having the same issue. I was editing files in PDT Eclipse on Windows and WinSCPing them over. I just copied and pasted the contents into a nano window, saved, and now they worked. Definitely some Windows character encoding issue, and not a matter of Shebangs or interpreter flags.

Answer 5

When you use php CLI argument -q doesn't exist.
I had the same problem when I wrote script in the Windows (eclipse) and I tried run them on Linux. Every line in file from Windows is ended by \r\n. I had to delete \r in first line that contained parser path:
When \r was deleted from first line (mcedit shown \r as ^M) script ran correctly.

Answer 6

Due to windows encoding issue for me
I experienced this "Could not open input file" error. Then I obtained the file using wget from another linux system, and the error did not occur.
The error ws only occurring for me when the file transited through windows.

Answer 7

I know its stupid but in my case i was outside of my project folder i didn't have spark file.

Answer 8

For me the problem was I had to use /usr/bin/php-cgi command instead of just /usr/bin/php
php-cgi is the command run when accessed thru web browser.
php is the CLI command line command.
Not sure why php cli is not working, but running with php-cgi instead fixed the problem for me.

Answer 9

The actual root cause is that the hyphen before "q" on the first line is actually not a standard ASCII hyphen(U+002D), but an en-dash(U+2013). The "a" with the funny hat that PHP reported was the first clue, and then if you look closely the "dash" is too big. This is the kind of thing word processors do to code.