International PHP Conference Berlin 2025

$argv

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

$argvArray of arguments passed to script

Description

Contains an array of all the arguments passed to the script when running from the command line.

Note: The first argument $argv[0] is always the name that was used to run the script.

Note: This variable is not available when register_argc_argv is disabled.

Examples

Example #1 $argv example

<?php
var_dump
($argv);
?>

When executing the example with: php script.php arg1 arg2 arg3

The above example will output something similar to:

array(4) {
  [0]=>
  string(10) "script.php"
  [1]=>
  string(4) "arg1"
  [2]=>
  string(4) "arg2"
  [3]=>
  string(4) "arg3"
}

Notes

Note:

This is also available as $_SERVER['argv'].

See Also

  • getopt() - Gets options from the command line argument list
  • $argc

add a note

User Contributed Notes 6 notes

up
89
tufan dot oezduman at googlemail dot com
13 years ago
Please note that, $argv and $argc need to be declared global, while trying to access within a class method.

<?php
class A
{
public static function
b()
{
var_dump($argv);
var_dump(isset($argv));
}
}

A::b();
?>

will output NULL bool(false) with a notice of "Undefined variable ..."

whereas global $argv fixes that.
up
31
hamboy75 at example dot com
11 years ago
To use $_GET so you dont need to support both if it could be used from command line and from web browser.

foreach ($argv as $arg) {
$e=explode("=",$arg);
if(count($e)==2)
$_GET[$e[0]]=$e[1];
else
$_GET[$e[0]]=0;
}
up
2
Steve Schmitt
15 years ago
If you come from a shell scripting background, you might expect to find this topic under the heading "positional parameters".
up
0
php at simoneast dot net
9 years ago
Sometimes $argv can be null, such as when "register-argc-argv" is set to false. In some cases I've found the variable is populated correctly when running "php-cli" instead of just "php" from the command line (or cron).
up
-2
Radon8472
3 years ago
I discovered that `register_argc_argv` is alway OFF if you use php internal webserver, even if it is set to `On` in the php.ini.

What means there seems to be no way to access argv / argc in php internal commandline server.
up
-1
vatruski at t dot me
1 year ago
You can reinitialize the argument variables for web applications.
So if you created a command line, with some additional tweaks you can make it work on the web.
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