Question

I am trying to backup a database using the PHP system command and mysqldump.exe. I have specified the absolute path to mysqldump.exe, followed by various options.

This is how I am currently making the call –

$path = "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\ABCD\mysqldump.exe";
$command = $path." <dump options>" > <backup filename> ";
system($command);

This is generating a sql file with absolutely no contents. I figured the problem is because of the spaces in the path name, because

$path = "C:\ABCD\mysqldump.exe";
$command = $path." <dump options>" > <backup filename> ";
system($command);

works absolutely fine.

I am unable to figure out how to make things work when the path contains spaces. I checked other threads which talked about escapeshellarg, etc but using that on the path doesn’t work either.

Please help.

Answer 1

Are you really doing this?

$system($command);

Should instead be:

// No $ on system()
system($command);

Also, try double backslashes for Windows paths:

$path = "\"C:\\Documents and Settings\\User\\Desktop\\ABCD\\mysqldump.exe\"";