Can PHP tell if the server os is 64-bit?

Question

I am dealing with Windows here.

I know you can use the $_SERVER[\'HTTP_USER_AGENT\'] variable to detect the OS of the browser viewing the page, but is t

Answer 1

Looking into all of this answers and some other solutions + my idea to "ask computer directly" i get this universal solution:

function is_64bit()
{
    // Let's ask system directly
    if(function_exists('shell_exec'))
    {

        if (in_array(strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3)), array('WIN'), true) !== false || defined('DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR') && '\\' === DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR)
        {
            // Is Windows OS
            $shell = shell_exec('wmic os get osarchitecture');
            if(!empty($shell))
            {
                if(strpos($shell, '64') !== false)
                    return true;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            // Let's check some UNIX approach if is possible
            $shell = shell_exec('uname -m');
            if(!empty($shell))
            {
                if(strpos($shell, '64') !== false)
                    return true;
            }
        }
    }

    // Check is PHP 64bit (PHP 64bit only running on Windows 64bit version)
    if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.0.5') >= 0)
    {
        if(defined('PHP_INT_SIZE') && PHP_INT_SIZE === 8)
            return true;
    }

    // bit-shifting can help also if PHP_INT_SIZE fail
    if((bool)((1<<32)-1))
        return true;

    // Let's play with bits again but on different way
    if(strlen(decbin(~0)) == 64)
        return true;

    // Let's do something more worse but can work if all above fail
    // The largest integer supported in 64 bit systems is 9223372036854775807. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9,223,372,036,854,775,807)
    $int = '9223372036854775807';
    if (intval($int) == $int)
        return true;

    return false;
}

Is tested on various machines and for now I have positive results. Fell free to use if you see any purpose.