Question

I’m struggling to understand the difference between shell_exec() and exec()…

I’ve always used exec() to execute server side commands, when would I use shell_exec()?

Is shell_exec() just a shorthand for exec()? It seems to be the same thing with fewer parameters.

Answer 1

shell_exec returns all of the output stream as a string. exec returns the last line of the output by default, but can provide all output as an array specifed as the second parameter.

See

• http://php.net/manual/en/function.shell-exec.php
• http://php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php