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(PHP 3, PHP 4, PHP 5)

popen -- Opens process file pointer

Description

resource popen ( string command, string mode )

Opens a pipe to a process executed by forking the command given by command.

Returns a file pointer identical to that returned by fopen() , except that it is unidirectional (may only be used for reading or writing) and must be closed with pclose() . This pointer may be used with fgets() , fgetss() , and fwrite() .

If an error occurs, returns FALSE .

Example 1. popen() example

<?php
$handle = popen("/bin/ls", "r");
?>

If the command to be executed could not be found, a valid resource is returned. This may seem odd, but makes sense; it allows you to access any error message returned by the shell:

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);

/* Add redirection so we can get stderr. */
$handle = popen('/path/to/spooge 2>&1', 'r');
echo "'$handle'; " . gettype($handle) . "\n";
$read = fread($handle, 2096);
echo $read;
pclose($handle);
?>

Warning

With safe mode enabled, all words following the initial command string are treated as a single argument. Thus, echo y | echo x becomes echo "y | echo x" .

Related Function(s)

fopen()

pclose()

fgets()

fgetss()

fwrite()

proc_open()