Question

I am looking for something in php that would given output (raw) of a system command in a variable along with the return code.

• exec does this, but the output is in array and hence the data returned is not proper(as \n comes in new index).
• system outputs the data in the output stream and not in a variable.
• shell_exec does not give the return value but gives raw data.

Answer 1

Sounds like you’re looking for output buffering:

ob_start();
system($command, $returnCode);
$output = ob_get_clean();

This should preserve all white-space characters at the end of each output line (exec as you wrote destroys these, so implode would not be an option).

Alternatively, you can open a process and aquire the pipes (standard output, STDOUT) and read the output out of these. But it’s more complicated (but gives you more options). See proc_open.