Command Line vs. Web PHP

31 Jan 2011 in PHP

In many environments, session_start() is either meaningless or will generate permission errors for PHP scripts being executed from the command line. Fortunately, the $_SERVER global variable contains data that make it possible to differentiate where a PHP script is being run.

if (! isset($_SERVER['SHELL'])) session_start();

Now, only when the particular script is being run outside a shell environment will a session_start() be attempted.