Question

I am wondering is this safe way to put ps aux into array and then display on the web? Or what could be done to improve it?

Example:

<table width="900px" border="1">
    <tr> 
        <td> PID </td>
        <td> CPU </td>
        <td> Mem </td>
        <td> Start </td>
        <td> Command</td>
    </tr>
    <?php
    exec("ps aux | grep -v grep | grep  process.php", $psOutput);
    if (count($psOutput) > 0) {
        foreach ($psOutput as $ps) {
            $ps = preg_split('/ +/', $ps);
            $pid = $ps[1];
            $cpu = $ps[2];
            $mem = $ps[3];
            $time = $ps[8];
            $command = $ps[10] . " " . $ps[11];
            echo "<tr>";
              echo "<td>" . $pid . "</td>";
              echo "<td>" . $cpu . "</td>";
              echo "<td>" . $mem . "</td>";
              echo "<td>" . $time . "</td>";
              echo "<td>" . $command . "</td>";
            echo "</tr>";
        }
    }
    ?>
</table>

Answer 1

I am wondering is this safe way to put ps aux into array and then display on the web? Or what could be done to improve it?

Nothing as far as I can tell. If this is the actual code and the command isn’t created from user input, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this code, apart from the fact that <table width="900px"> is generally controlled by CSS, not HTML. But that’s all the critique I can think of.

EDIT: Quentin makes a very valid point in that you should use htmlspecialchars before displaying in HTML.