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#!/usr/bin/php doesn't seem to work but #!/usr/local/bin/php does.

#!/usr/bin/php seems to only need to be used on the very first open php
tag

If you need an alternative to ForceType to parse extensionless files as
php AND you are trying to use $PATH_INFO to carry query string variables
(in order to avoid URLs with query strings), like:

    http://www.yourdomain.com/extensionlessfile/varname/varvalue

where "extensionlessfile" is the filename of the php script that does
the parsing of "varname", then you need to cd into the same directory as
extensionlessfile and make a symlink from "extensionlessfile" to a file
with a .php extension like this:

     ln -s extensionlessfile extensionlessfile.php

Then use mod_rewrite to pass all requests for the above URL invisibly to
the .php script by putting these rewrite rules in an .htaccess file in
the same directory or above this directory:

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !extensionlessfile\.php
    RewriteRule ^extensionlessfile(.*)$ /extensionlessfile.php$1 

If you're trying to run a weird file extension that requires you to have


    #!/usr/local/bin/php

at the top of each file, you can do that real quick to your entire file
tree by doing this from a shell prompt:

     cd /htdocs
     cp -a www www-old
     cd www
     find . -type f -name \*.weirdextension -exec perl -pi -e 'print
"#!/usr/local/bin/php\n" if($. == 1); close ARGV if eof' {} \;

That was 4 commands, 1 on each line hitting ENTER in between. The last
one is a long one and should be all on 1 line even though it wraps
around and looks like multiple lines in this note.

That will make a backup of your existing files first, and then find
every file under your tree that is named like *.weirdextension and it
will prepend the appropriate hash-bang line at the top of all those
files.

Using mod_rewrite is rarely useful, I find.  This is mainly due to the
fact that all requests need to go through Apache's file find functions
twice.  Once as 'testpage', which triggers the rewrite, and once as
'testpage.php', which is passed through the rewrite again, but does not
trigger it.  This is hardly efficient.  

As for which #!/.../php lines work - it's entirely dependant on your
installation of PHP.  Some PHP installations will install the php
executable in /usr/local/bin, some in /usr/bin, and some in more exotic
locations (like /opt/php-version/bin) and some installations do not have
a command-line version of PHP at all!

Having the first line of a file starting with #! and a path to an
executable started long ago with shell scripts, and has continued to
this day as a useful way of telling the system which program to dump the
file into.  Other common examples are #!/bin/bash, #!/bin/sh,
#!/usr/bin/perl, #!/usr/bin/python, etc.  If you use a first line of
#!/bin/cat you will get out what you put in.  Using programs like 'sed'
you can create interesting (and blindingly fast) search-and-replace
statements, and more.

An even better example would be to AddHandler cgi-script .xml and
specify "#!/usr/bin/xsltproc -" as the first line.  You can have a
properly formatted XML document automatically converted to HTML this
way.  (Though I don't reccomend it, as this would be horribly slow.  Try
a combination of XML, XSLT, and PHP for cacheing.)

The "ForceType" directive is unsupported here. In the future, Apache
will not be compiled with PHP inside it as a module. At that point php
will not be part of the httpd and so "x-httpd-php" will be a
nonfunctional directive and will break any site that relies on it. That
is why the mod-rewrite alternative to Forcetypes is suggested above.

If you're trying to get rid of a ForceType directive for an
extensionless file, and you've got a number of extensionless files in
the same directory that all need to be parsed as PHP, then make the .php
symlinks as per the above, but then use this rewrite rule:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /(file1|file2|file3|file4)$
RewriteRule .* %1.php

If the extensionless files are not at the DocumentRoot, then you'll need
a RewriteBase directive. For example, if the extensionless files were
under /htdocs/www/example (where /htdocs/www is the DocumentRoot), then
you'd add this to the rewrite ruleset:

RewriteBase /example

AddType application/x-httpd-php .html

is another way to do it.