In PHP 4.3.1 (and possibly 4.3.0), running scripts from the command line works a lot better. This is probably because 4.3.x has a whole new CLI mode.
Specifically, exit status is now returned (to the shell) as you would expect. This is a godsend for writing embedded email processing scripts, as much email infrastructure (fetchmail, qmail, mutt, etc.) is dependant upon correctly returned status codes, and the inability to return a status code (as in PHP 4.2.x) is an insurmountable obstacle.
$_SERVER["argv"] is also always available in 4.3.x, I think, whereas in 4.2.x php.ini could prevent it from being available.
(On the downside, I had to ./configure --without-mysql in order to get 4.3.1 to compile on RedHat 8.0. Otherwise there was what looked like a fatal compile warning (that I might also have been able to ignore somehow).
The "fatal warning" FYI:
ext/mysql/libmysql/my_tempnam.o: In function `my_tempnam':
ext/mysql/libmysql/my_tempnam.c:103: the use of `tempnam' is dangerous, better use `mkstemp'
Changing the code from tempnam to mkstemp would probably not be overly complicated, but it is non-trivial.)