Question

How do I use a PHP5 variable inside a system() call

$dir = ‘/etc/somedir’;

eg system("ls $dir")

I think I’m missing something

I am actually passing a variable from a post

e.g.

$username = $_POST[username];

to a system call

system(“processData –user $username –pass $password”);

this isn’t working, so i trivialised down to a simple
example

Answer 1

You are doing it fine except that you are missing semi-colon (;)

system("ls $dir");

You can also do like:

system("ls" . $dir);

Note:

When allowing user-supplied data to be
passed to this function, use
escapeshellarg() or
escapeshellcmd() to ensure that
users cannot trick the system into
executing arbitrary commands.