If you missed that argument when initially installing php5 and want to add it after the fact, this is all you need:
sudo apt-get install php5-readline
Installation
To use these functions you must compile the CGI or CLI version of PHP with readline support. You need to configure PHP --with-readline[=DIR]. If you want to use the libedit readline replacement, configure PHP --with-libedit[=DIR].
On Windows this extension is available by default as of PHP 7.1.0.
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User Contributed Notes 2 notes
kevin_tm at yahoo dot com ¶
8 years ago
rs at income dot cz ¶
9 years ago
Use dotdeb. It's like 1 minute work.
Follow https://www.dotdeb.org/instructions/
Do only points 1,3,4 (omit 2)
and then
sudo apt-get install php5-readline
