PHPFlexer

The simplest PHP-to-EXE conversion ever

We all know PHP, and we all love standalone EXE tools for simple, repetitive tasks. There is a tool called phc-win that can compile a PHP program for you and create an EXE of it; but now it's a lot more straightforward. All you need to do is this:

 phpflexer compile myprogram.php 

...and you have your EXE file in a split second. It only knows the basics so it's not for heavyweight rounds but for simple tools it's more than enough. I've made a LESS compiler, a file change watcher, a backup tool and a lot of other stuff with it so for me it has proven to be really useful; I decided to publish it. Even if it's basically the same as phc-win without the graphical interface, it's very different when it comes to everyday use.

Sample programs

To make testing & understanding easier, there are sample PHP scripts included. First of all there's a Hello World, it's the absolute minimum since Kernighan and Ritchie. Then there's one called findwords that can parse files looking for a combination of words, like "give me all lines where all these words occur", which is quite a common need and there is no obvious way to do it (usually even IDEs and editors only have an option to use regex and they think they're done; now look for 4 words in any order using regex - whatever, #sigh). And the 3rd example is a directory stats tool, showing you the subdirectories of a certain starting point and all their sizes. Again, something that you can write with just a few lines of coding but hard to implement as a handy little exe. Not anymore.