Getting Windows exec to work better.

Things are not that simple.
I would advise you to read a more than one year thread about the very same
subject: http://marc.info/?l=php-dev&m=113919491216978

Nuno

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Quadling" rquadling@googlemail.com
To: "PHP Developers Mailing List" internals@lists.php.net
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 8:43 AM
Subject: [PHP-DEV] Getting Windows exec to work better.

Hi.

http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=25361

I supplied a patch to fix this bug.

The issue is NOT a PHP bug, but a "that's how it is on windows" issue.

On *nix, if you want to exec a program via PHP whose program name or
parameters contain spaces, do you need to use a pair of double quotes
around the name/parameter? If so, are there any issues if you have
many sets of double quotes? If not, then this is a difference between
*nix and windows for the operation of PHP.

With the patch it should deal with this, allowing PHP userland code to
operate in the same way on both platforms.

If someone could take a look, I'd be grateful.

Ok. Thanks for the link. I have read similar notes but no response as
to why the patches supplied have NOT been committed.

IIRC ...

[2007-08-03 10:03:00] <Pierre> we don't care about 9x
[2007-08-03 10:03:27] <Pierre> RichardQ, did you test it on recent
windows too? I wonder if we can have more tests about this problem (if
possible)

Is PHP on 9x "supported"?

I'm using XP, and from the command line, calling ...

%comspec% /s /c ""program name here with spaces" "parameter here with spaces""

works fine.

e.g.

%comspec% /c ""C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
"http://www.google.com/search?q=php with spaces""

Loads internet explorer with the appropriate google page.

In PHP ...

<?php
exec('""C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
"http://www.google.com/search?q=php with spaces""');
?>

as does ...

cd "Program Files\Internet Explorer"
%comspec% /s /c "iexplore.exe "http://www.google.com/search?q=php with spaces""

But having to wrap your entire command line with quotes is not
consistent with *nix platforms. And for the sake of a few additional
characters in the exec method for windows (with the split for NT+ vs
9x), then this would save a lot of headache and once again, make PHP
windows compatible.

--

Richard Quadling
Zend Certified Engineer : http://zend.com/zce.php?c=ZEND002498&r=213474731
"Standing on the shoulders of some very clever giants!"