The initial PHP setup and configuration process is controlled by the use of the commandline options of the configure script. This page outlines the usage of the most common options, but there are many others to play with. Check out the Complete list of configure options for an exhaustive rundown. There are several ways to install PHP

This modifier turns on additional functionality of PCRE that is incompatible with Perl. Any backslash in a pattern that is followed by a letter that has no special meaning causes an error, thus reserving these combinations for future expansion. By default, as in Perl, a backslash followed by a letter with no special meaning is treated as a literal. There are at present no other features controlled by this modifier.