cant get php5.5 update to work

[quanton]

I tried getting help with this at phphelp but got no takers.  Maybe someone here can help me with this total newbie fiasco...

 

To start with php 5.3 is working fine on my local server most of the time.  Sometimes when i make syntax errors when checking php code, maybe it takes to long  to reload.  Sometimes, i get a prompt to try again. I hit enter and it loads. I dont know if this is usual behavior or not.  A web designer friend says to not blame the php, that its something probably wrong with my system and since he's a linux guy who just hates the fact that some people use osx  (in my case 10.6. I take his cautions with a grain of salt...
but anyway, when I updated php from 5.3 to 5.5 there were "problems" with the download and configurations as well,  and I was thinking, maybe the hangup in my php is a result of these "problems" and maybe i should take care of it/them.  Also, I  dont want to migrate the problem to a newer computer soon....

The shorter  history of my update debacle goes something like this;

I started a tutorial about php with one guy who walked me through using mamp.  Had some problems with configuring due to newbie idioscy but ultimately got things working in php 5.3. Then I tried to update to 5.5. There were error logs from the download which i couldn't understand.  I thought maybe I couldn't migrate from 5.3 to 5.5 and so downloaded 5.4 which presented with the same error logs (  I can provide the essence of those if helpful). Not quite sure of the sequence now, but ultimately was able to get 5.5 to work. Later, however when  I was doing something with updating changes to one of the conf files or something like that, I made some more newbie type errors and may have edited the file/ uncommented some lines in ways i couldn't detect.  I think after that , was when I went to my_phpinfo page and it reverted back to  5.3.26. I;ve tried a number of things to get 5.5 to work but cant.

 I then started a different intro tutorial about php ( the first guy was slow like molasses) and the new guy wasnt suggesting to use mamp, but instead taught how to use the packages from the php website.  I liked the idea of more control of things and also hoped I could get 5.5 to work with that tutorial which I did the php/mysql setup section too many times to admit.  Finally I gave up with trying to get 5.5 working though I did get rid of mamp and was able to work php (5.3) the way he showed.

Now Im grinding about it again and sure would appreciate some help getting 5.5 to work....

I have all the file path's for the different ini folders.  Im thinking if I could just change the 6th line on my_phpinfo to the path where my 5.5 folder is that would fix it .  But I cant figure out how to do that or where;  in unix or one of the  config files? 

When I updated php to 5.5 ( and 5.4) I used ;
curl -s http://php-osx.liip.ch/install.sh | bash -s 5.5

also if it matters in I changed the symlink in /usr/local/ php5  so that it points to 5.5 not 5.3 as it was...

thanks in advance, for any help with this....

[gristoi]

I develop on a mac, easiest way is to instal php using homebrew. google 'php homebrew mac' . is very simple. I have php 5.3,5.4 and 5.5 installed and swich at will