php exec: does not return output

Question

I have this problem: On a ISS web server, windows 7 x64 professional, zend server installed. Running this command under php:

exec(\'dir\',$output, $err);
         


        

Answer 1

EDIT: After a few researchs, the only way i see to execute the DIR command is like that:

cmd.exe /c dir c:\

So you can try my solution using:

$command = 'cmd.exe /c dir c:\\';

You can use proc_open function too, which gives you access to stderr, return status code and stdout.

    $stdout = $stderr = $status = null;
    $descriptorspec = array(
       1 => array('pipe', 'w'),  // stdout is a pipe that the child will write to
       2 => array('pipe', 'w') // stderr is a pipe that the child will write to
    );

    $process = proc_open($command, $descriptorspec, $pipes);

    if (is_resource($process)) {
        // $pipes now looks like this:
        // 0 => writeable handle connected to child stdin
        // 1 => readable handle connected to child stdout
        // 2 => readable handle connected to child stderr

        $stdout = stream_get_contents($pipes[1]);
        fclose($pipes[1]);

        $stderr = stream_get_contents($pipes[2]);
        fclose($pipes[2]);

        // It is important that you close any pipes before calling
        // proc_close in order to avoid a deadlock
        $status = proc_close($process);
    }

    return array($status, $stdout, $stderr);

The interesting part with proc_open, compared to other functions like popen or exec, is that it provides options specific to windows platform like:

suppress_errors (windows only): suppresses errors generated by this function when it's set to TRUE
bypass_shell (windows only): bypass cmd.exe shell when set to TRUE