Drush 8.1.15 failing with error on fresh Drupal 8 install

[toddvogel]

Friends, I would appreciate some assistance.

I am on a shared hosting running Linux. I have installed globally Composer and Drush and then Drupal 8. Composer works from all directories and so does Drush. Drush runs from my Drupal install directory until I actually install the database and get a settings.php file.

Which is to say, I used Drush to install a fresh drupal site. Next I go into that new directory and run drush status. Drush runs and gives me the report on the site, stating there's no settings.php file (because I have not yet set up the database, etc). After setting up and running the Drupal installer from a browser I go back to the directory via the command line and run Drush Status and get the following:

Drush command terminated abnormally due to an unrecoverable error. [error]
Error: syntax error, unexpected 'finally' (T_STRING), expecting catch
(T_CATCH) in
/home3/bishopultras/public_html/bhsu/vendor/symfony/dependency-injection/ContainerBuilder.php,
line 452

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'finally' (T_STRING), expecting catch (T_CATCH) in /home3/bishopultras/public_html/bhsu/vendor/symfony/dependency-injection/ContainerBuilder.php on line 452

I am running php 5.6, and switched to 7.1.3 to see if that was an issue, it was not.

I've set up Composer/drush for two other sites and they work fine. The difference is mainly this is Drupal 8
Thanks much

[toddvogel]

If I remove the settings.php file Drush status report works without error (but I have no site...)

[greg-1-anderson]

Run drush status from a global location without your site. Double-check what version of php Drush reports you are running. From the symptoms, it looks like you are running an older php-cli than you think you are.

[toddvogel]

Thank you -
drush status:
bishopultras@bishopultras.com [~]# drush status
PHP executable : /usr/bin/php-cli
PHP configuration : /opt/php54/lib/php.ini
PHP OS : Linux
Drush script : /home3/bishopultras/.composer/vendor/drush/drush/dru
sh.php
Drush version : 8.1.15
Drush temp directory : /tmp
Drush configuration :
Drush alias files :

But phpinfo.php reports 7.1.3

[greg-1-anderson]

Your website is using PHP 7.1.3, but the php that is in your $PATH is 5.4, which is not supported for your version of Drupal.

[toddvogel]

Thanks Greg-1-anderson. I didn't even know that was possible, rather new to this. Will investigate further. Thanks again.