I'm a big fan of PHP interactive mode (php -a). Today I decided to install PHP 5.4 to play around a little bit. It's fun to use the new built-in server and all that stuff, but I was very sad when I discovered that the interactive mode doesn't work.

I installed PHP 5.4 on my Ubuntu by adding the PPA:

add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php5

apt-get update

apt-get install php5

And this is what I get when I run php -a:

$ php -a

Interactive mode enabled

Aaaaand nothing more. As far as I know this PPA follows the newest PHP5 maintained by Debian PKG PHP Team and as far as I know the interactive mode is also usually broken on freshly installed Debians.

Any ideas on how to get it back? Preferably using some other PPA or at least without compiling - that's usually less painful.