Question

Basically, the file was broken some where along the way from Windows7 to Ubuntu.

How can I look at a binary representation of the file to see what happened?

Answer 1

PHP command line script still have to have the <?php opener in them.

#!/usr/bin/php
echo "hi mom!\n";

will not work, it has to be

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
    echo "hi mom!\n";

This is because there’s no such thing as a “php script”. There are only various text files that have PHP code blocks embedded within them. Even in CLI mode, PHP expects/requires to see at least one <?php block. Otherwise the interpreter won’t kick in and won’t see any of the code, even though you’ve stated it’s a PHP script with the shebang.

PHP cli mode is basically a hacked-in afterthought. PHP started out as a server-side CGI script parser and has not fundamentally changed from that mode.