How can I display PHP source code on Linux or similar?

I am trying to do system("cat variables.php&q开发者_StackOverflow社区uot;); from a PHP script, but it doesn't write anything.

What's the problem?

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If you want to display the entire file to users, try:

highlight_file("path/to/file");

http://us3.php.net/highlight_file

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You can use file_get_contents to get the content of a file.

And you can use __FILE__ to get the path to the current file -- if you want the current file, of course

So, to display the content of the current file:

echo file_get_contents(__FILE__);

Note 1: you might have to do some escaping:

echo '<pre>' . htmlspecialchars(file_get_contents(__FILE__)) . '</pre>';

Note 2: you can do that with any file, of course -- just make sure the path to the file is correct:

echo '<pre>' . htmlspecialchars(file_get_contents('/path/to/my/file.php')) . '</pre>';

And if you want more than just display the content -- if you want syntax-highlighting -- you could use the highlight_file function; or something like GeSHi, which is richer and more configurable.

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If you're trying to display the contents of the file in its entirety some servers are configured to display the source of PHP files with a file extensions of phps. It will also syntax highlight the file's contents when displaying it.

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It's not clear what you are trying to achieve, but if you are trying to step through your PHP code, use:

• http://xdebug.org/
• http://www.firephp.org/

These tools will allow you to view your variables at different points in time.

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In case anyone out there still needs the answer, put this anywhere in your code and it will display it with syntax highlighting.

show_source();

It should definitely work in PHP 5.0 and above.