As PHP-CLI has a different ini file, this often leads to misconfiguration.

What we can do, for a «unix shebang» PHP shell script, is to set ini keys on the fly directly on the shebang line, like so:

#!/usr/bin/php -d memory_limit=512M
<?php
phpinfo();
exit;

Then to see if php had understood, using phpinfo():

./myphpProg | grep memory

Correct shell output should contain:

memory_limit => 512M => 512M

man php

-d foo[=bar] Define INI entry foo with value bar

Without using the Unix shebang mechanism, we can similarly pass one (or many) -d arguments in the command line, or a dedicated start-up script:

php -d memory_limit=512M myphpProg

Add this at the very top your code of PHP ini_set("memory_limit", "2048M"); in your PHP script. Make sure to increase memory_limit according to your need.

If you keep on getting this kind of error message of exhausted memory. you can use ini_set("memory_limit", "-1");. This will set your memory limit to no limit.

Note: This will set your memory limit to no limit. Memory limit is the thing which is dependent on your OS and RAM not on PHP.

Note: Also please make sure if you are doing something on your production environment in your PHP script, whose job is to keep on adding data to there script, either in your static variables(Example: gathering multiple CSV's data) or some arrays, then it can lead to either failure of that VM or PHP process in case of complete memory exhaust.

The default php.ini file for the CLI in xampp is located in %xamppRoot%\php\php.ini not under %xamppRoot%\apache\bin\php.ini