Question

Just interested what the you pros think as I came across the execution operator not so long ago and thought it was neater and cleaner to see/use but is there difference between using the execution operator or the build-in php function like exec() or system() as never seen it used before?

//execution operator
<?php 
    echo '<pre>'; 
    echo `netstat -a`;
    echo '</pre>'
?>



<?php 
echo '<pre>'; 
echo  system('netstat -a');
echo '</pre>'
?>

Answer 1

The backtick operator is identical to shell_exec. There are some differences between the different system/exec/shell_exec/passthru etc. commands, please refer to the manual for details. If what you’re looking for is the behavior of shell_exec, the backtick operator is just fine.