title: Laravel 4 - Composer Install fails every time, even though I'm using PHP 5.4
body: <p>I'm running into issues installing Laravel 4... I am following the instructions posted here:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://badubizzle.blogspot.com/2013/01/setting-up-laravel-4-on-webfaction.html" rel="nofollow">http://badubizzle.blogspot.com/2013/01/setting-up-laravel-4-on-webfaction.html</a></p>
  
  <p>My host allows multiple versions of PHP to run at the same time, so running the command <code>php</code> will run php 5.2.17 on whatever you specify next.  I know you need greater than php 5.3 to run Laravel 4, so I am using php 5.4 to do so.  I can either specifically type <code>php54</code> to run the command under php 5.4, or an alias can be made in the .bash_profile to do so just when typing php, which is what I did.</p>
  
  <p>Now, when I run the command <code>php -v</code>, I get the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>PHP 5.4.16 (cli) (built: Jul 24 2013 07:46:20) 
  Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
  Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies
      with the ionCube PHP Loader v4.2.1, Copyright (c) 2002-2012, by ionCube Ltd.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The reason I did that was because when using composer, it seems that a lot of the commands it runs, it finds in the laravel files that are downloaded, and they all start with <code>php</code>, instead of <code>php54</code>, so I figured by making the alias, I should be fine, right?  Wrong.</p>
  
  <p>When I run this line:</p>
  
  <pre><code>php ~/composer.phar install
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The system gets a bunch of files (like it should), and then it gets to this error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Warning: Unexpected character in input:  '\' (ASCII=92) state=1 in /home/apps/laravel-master/artisan on line 46
  
  Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /home/apps/laravel-master/artisan on line 46
  Script php artisan optimize handling the post-install-cmd event returned with an error
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I research this error, everything I see says that it's an error of not running a high enough PHP version, and that you need to run <code>php54</code> or something.  I am doing that, and I'm still getting this error!  Any ideas here?  This REALLY has me stumped and I'm getting super frustrated.  I would really appreciate any help anyone can offer!!</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p>
  
  <p>I have tried following Laravel's documentation and have run into the same issue once I run the <code>composer create-project laravel/laravel your-project-name --prefer-dist</code> command - it runs for a while, and then gets to the parse error.  I really have no idea what's wrong here!</p>