http://sudgolf.fr/temp/phpinfo(SRV).htm is incomplete. Looks like you were debugging when grabbed the source. Some text remained in php buffer that would be flushed on finish, but you didn't finish.
BTW, do you have any expressions in Watch?
If you type $a in Immediate, will it print correct value?

$a in immediate windows
$a
: array =
$_GET: array =
DBGSESSID: string = "425303783040500001;d=1,p=0,c=1"
$_POST: array =
$_COOKIE: array =
$_FILES: array =
$_SERVER: array =
ALLUSERSPROFILE: string = "C:\\ProgramData"
APPDATA: string = "C:\\Users\\Reynald\\AppData\\Roaming"
asl_log: string = "Destination=file"
CHROME_ALLOCATOR: string = "TCMALLOC"
CommonProgramFiles: string = "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files"
CommonProgramFiles(x86): string = "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Common Files"
CommonProgramW6432: string = "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files"
COMPUTERNAME: string = "REYNALD-PC"
ComSpec: string = "C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\cmd.exe"
FPS_BROWSER_APP_PROFILE_STRING: string = "Internet Explorer"
FPS_BROWSER_USER_PROFILE_STRING: string = "Default"
FP_NO_HOST_CHECK: string = "NO"
HOMEDRIVE: string = "C:"
HOMEPATH: string = "\\Users\\Reynald"
LOCALAPPDATA: string = "C:\\Users\\Reynald\\AppData\\Local"
LOGONSERVER: string = "\\\\REYNALD-PC"
MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH: string = "C:\\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\\FOXIT SOFTWARE\\FOXIT READER\\plugins\\"
NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS: string = "8"
OS: string = "Windows_NT"
Path: string = "C:\\ProgramData\\Oracle\\Java\\javapath;C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Windows Live;C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Windows Live;C:\\Windows\\system32;C:\\Windows;C:\\Windows\\System32\\Wbem;C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Windows Live\\Shared;C:\\Program Files (x86)\\EgisTec MyWinLocker\\x64;C:\\Program Files (x86)\\EgisTec MyWinLocker\\;C:\\Program Files (x86)\\ATI Technologies\\ATI.ACE\\Core-Static;C:\\Windows\\System32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\;C:\\Users\\Reynald\\AppData\\Local\\Smartbar\\Application\\;C:\\Program Files (x86)\\QuickTime\\QTSystem\\;;C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Smart Projects\\IsoBuster;C:\\WINDOWS\\system32;C:\\WINDOWS;C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\Wbem;C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\;C:\\Program Files\\doxygen\\bin;C:\\Program Files (x86)\\AMD\\ATI.ACE\\Core-Static"
PATHEXT: string = ".COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC"
PHPRC: string = ""
PHPRC~: string = "D:\\www\\php\\"
PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE: string = "AMD64"
PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER: string = "Intel64 Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7, GenuineIntel"
PROCESSOR_LEVEL: string = "6"
PROCESSOR_REVISION: string = "2a07"
ProgramData: string = "C:\\ProgramData"
ProgramFiles: string = "C:\\Program Files"
ProgramFiles(x86): string = "C:\\Program Files (x86)"
ProgramW6432: string = "C:\\Program Files"
PSModulePath: string = "C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\Modules\\"
PUBLIC: string = "C:\\Users\\Public"
SESSIONNAME: string = "Console"
SystemDrive: string = "C:"
SystemRoot: string = "C:\\WINDOWS"
TEMP: string = "C:\\Users\\Reynald\\AppData\\Local\\Temp"
TMP: string = "C:\\Users\\Reynald\\AppData\\Local\\Temp"
USERDOMAIN: string = "Reynald-PC"
USERDOMAIN_ROAMINGPROFILE: string = "Reynald-PC"
USERNAME: string = "Reynald"
USERPROFILE: string = "C:\\Users\\Reynald"
windir: string = "C:\\WINDOWS"
windows_tracing_flags: string = "3"
windows_tracing_logfile: string = "C:\\BVTBin\\Tests\\installpackage\\csilogfile.log"
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS: string = "250"
ORIG_SCRIPT_NAME: string = "/php/php-cgi.exe"
ORIG_PATH_TRANSLATED: string = "D:\\www\\wamp\\www\\index.php"
ORIG_PATH_INFO: string = "/index.php"
ORIG_SCRIPT_FILENAME: string = "C:/Program Files/NuSphere/PhpED/php56/php-cgi.exe"
QUERY_STRING: string = "DBGSESSID=425303783040500001;d=1,p=0,c=1"
REQUEST_METHOD: string = "GET"
SERVER_PROTOCOL: string = "HTTP/1.1"
GATEWAY_INTERFACE: string = "CGI/1.1"
SERVER_PORT: string = "8080"
SERVER_NAME: string = "localhost"
SERVER_SOFTWARE: string = "Srv/17.0.0.17022"
HTTP_USER_AGENT: string = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0"
HTTP_CONNECTION: string = "keep-alive"
HTTP_HOST: string = "localhost:8080"
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: string = "fr,fr-FR;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.5,en;q=0.3"
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING: string = "gzip, deflate"
HTTP_ACCEPT: string = "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8"
REMOTE_PORT: string = "61592"
REMOTE_ADDR: string = "0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1"
SERVER_ADDR: string = "0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1"
DOCUMENT_ROOT: string = "D:\\www\\wamp\\www"
REQUEST_URI: string = "/index.php?DBGSESSID=425303783040500001;d=1,p=0,c=1"
SCRIPT_NAME: string = "/index.php"
SCRIPT_FILENAME: string = "D:\\www\\wamp\\www\\index.php"
REDIRECT_URL: string = "/index.php"
REDIRECT_STATUS: string = "200"
REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING: string = "DBGSESSID=425303783040500001;d=1,p=0,c=1"
FCGI_ROLE: string = "RESPONDER"
PHP_SELF: string = "/index.php"
REQUEST_TIME_FLOAT: double = 1465455886.0922
REQUEST_TIME: long = 1465455886
$a: string = "hello world"

Phpinfo(SRV).htm is updated

<?php
$a = "hello world";
echo $a;
phpinfo()
?>

What expressions do you have in Watch window?
Try to disables -- Locals, Globals, and Watch.

All windows closed,
no expression anywhere

My soft

<?php
$a = "hello world";
echo $a;
?>
F9 to start
F8 one step
cursor on $a

too many lines .....

same problem with local or SRV

did you check if there are expressions in View->Debug Windows->Watch?

View > debug > watch is empty

Hello,

I had exactly the same problem.
But as it worked with an other project, I checked the differences between the two project and tried debugger while changing properties.

And the problem is because of the "Default encoding". It's OK if I let "System default encoding" OR "UTF8" or "Windows-1252", or "ISO-8859-1" but it doesn't work with "ISO-8859-15" !!

Don't understand why, but it solved this problems for me... Hope for you too !

thanks for hint. We'll check it

I close everything , create new dir, copy index.php and create a new project.
F9 and F8 = value under cursor is correct : $a: string = "hello world"

Problem seemed to be is in ppw file

it's indeed what forey suggested. Picking ISO-8849-15 reproduced the problem. We will fix it in dbg 8.1.6 (phped 17024)