for example,

PHP Code:

<? $output = `ls adir/`; echo "$output<br>";?>

if `adir' doesn't exist, I would like to see the message saying it doesn't exist, right? I know i can use system() to get the return code, but I'm using so many different commands changing the numbers to messages would be nontrivial.

Try opeining it in a pipe its the best way to get close to your external binary.
When your wishing to communicate with your binaries a simple system or exec will suffice as long as you are not dependant on information returned by that binary.

But say with something like gpg where you could have a process that goes through several stages then opening a pipe to that binary is your best bet, you could then take action on the returned info.

PHP Code:

<?php
/* Add 2>&1 so we can get stderr. */
$handle = popen('ls adir/ 2>&1', 'r');
echo "'$handle'; " . gettype($handle) . "\n";
while($read = fread($handle, 2096)){
  echo $read;
}
pclose($handle);
?>

$output = `ls adir/`; echo "$output<br>";

All this will do is display ls adir/ .

Make sure you have permissions to view the dir or it wont work. test on /tmp

Ibbo

OK Thanks!

the 2>&1 part was what i was looking for, that idea completely escaped me.

just to be clear:

Originally Posted by ibbo

$output = `ls adir/`; echo "$output<br>";

All this will do is display ls adir/ .

around ls adir/ are backticks, not single quotes. so my command would change to:

$output = `ls adir 2>&1`;

and it works fine. the output redirection is a shell function though, will it work cross platform? I've only tested it on a linux server so far.

Oh so they are. Still never mind it works.

comes in handy that 2>&1 eh, works wonderfully in shell scripts but alas I dont know if it will do the same thing under windows. I cant confirm nor deny because I dont use it.

Ibbo