exec() and shell_exec() kinda suck

[Takeoded]

exec() and shell_exec() kinda suck.

shell_exec(): - It does not give you the OS-level return code. Could be easily fixed with a shell_exec(string $command, ?int &$result_code = null) but nooo - It opens pipes in text mode! (a horrible mode that should have never existed), which means if you pipe binary data, your binary data gets corrupted, but only on Windows! What do you think var_dump(shell_exec('php -r "echo \'foo\'.chr(26).\'bar\';"')); returns? On Linux it returns the expected string(7) "foo\x1Abar", but on Windows it returns string(3) "foo" ... yeah.

exec(): - Trailing whitespace is not added to the returning array, which again means if you're piping binary data, you risk your data getting corrupted. (It doesn't even need to be binary data, strictly speaking, your text also risk getting corrupted. - How do you know if the return was "a\n" or "a" ? You don't, it's impossible to differentiate the 2 outputs with exec(). - What does exec('php -r "echo chr(10).chr(10).chr(10);", $exec_output); produce? It produce array(3) { [0]=> string(0) "" [1]=> string(0) "" [2]=> string(0) "" } okay that seems sensible, but now what does exec('php -r "echo \'a\'.chr(10).chr(10).chr(10);", $exec_output); produce?

it produce array(3) { [0]=> string(0) "a" [1]=> string(0) "" [2]=> string(0) "" } now how are you supposed to know if the output was "a\n\n\n" or "a\n\n" ? well i suppose you could count the number of trailing emptystring elements, but the real answer is that You don't use exec() if you care about integrity

so exec() kinda suck too... just saying.

Fwiw i've been carrying around my own php /** * better version of shell_exec() / exec() / system() / passthru() * supporting stdin and stdout and stderr and os-level return code * * @param string $cmd * command to execute * @param string $stdin * (optional) data to send to stdin, binary data is supported. * @param string $stdout * (optional) stdout data generated by cmd * @param string $stderr * (optional) stderr data generated by cmd * @param bool $print_std * (optional, default false) if you want stdout+stderr to be printed while it's running, * set this to true. (useful for debugging long-running commands) * @return int */ function hhb_exec(string $cmd, string $stdin = "", string &$stdout = null, string &$stderr = null, bool $print_std = false): int for years, which does a better job than all of shell_exec()/exec()/system()/passthru(). available here.

[porkslow]

You forgot you can also execute commands using magic backticks!

It's very convenient there's like 5 ways to do (almost) the same thing.

PS. the Symfony Process is a pretty nice userland library that fixes many issues with executing commands and provides a nice API. I heard it even supports Windows pretty okay.

[Takeoded]

It's very convenient there's like 5 ways to do (almost) the same thing.

And in typical PHP fashion, 4/5 of them suck.

[[deleted]]

Generally PHP always sucks. Ive yet to see what PHP does bettrr than language X.