I think it depends on the situation, at least that is what I've gleaned from my reading of it if you run a .php file and you have mod_php or the webserver has

I think it depends on the situation, at least that is what I've gleaned from my reading of it if you run a .php file and you have mod_php or the webserver has understanding of the concept of PHP and calls the binary directly, all nice and good if you have a something.randomext or something without an extension at all, then... whelp luckily there is a program that is dedicated to working out how to run random executable files, the shell (and it uses the shell-bang, or shbang for short), so in that situation, the call will be done though the shell