tags: php exec capture
title: Capturing Output of Shell Commmand

To execute a system command:
```php
$output = shell_exec("command args..."); // $output is string
exec("command",$output); // $output is array of lines
```
To get the effect of Python`s `system.run` where we present the command as an array,
we need to use 
```php
$args = ["echo","hello","world mr","flibble"];
$escaped_args = array_map(function($x) { return escapeshellarg($x); }, $args);
$command = implode(" ",$escaped_args);
$result = system($command);
```
Note that the `PATH` is a basic one with `/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin` and little else.

# Resources
* https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php
* https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.shell-exec.php