Here are the differences. Note the newlines at the end.
> shell_exec('date')
string(29) "Wed Mar 6 14:18:08 PST 2013\n"
> exec('date')
string(28) "Wed Mar 6 14:18:12 PST 2013"
> shell_exec('whoami')
string(9) "mark\n"
> exec('whoami')
string(8) "mark"
> shell_exec('ifconfig')
string(1244) "eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 10:bf:44:44:22:33 \n inet addr:192.168.0.90 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0\n inet6 addr: fe80::12bf:ffff:eeee:2222/64 Scope:Link\n UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1\n RX packets:16264200 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 frame:0\n TX packets:7205647 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0\n collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 \n RX bytes:13151177627 (13.1 GB) TX bytes:2779457335 (2.7 GB)\n"...
> exec('ifconfig')
string(0) ""
Note that use of the backtick operator is identical to shell_exec()
.
Update: I really should explain that last one. Looking at this answer years later even I don't know why that came out blank! Daniel explains it above -- it's because exec
only returns the last line, and ifconfig
's last line happens to be blank.