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How to retrieve PHP exec() error responses?

Below is the command I tried executing, without success:

exec('ln -s ' . PLUGIN_DIR . '/.htaccess ' . ABSPATH . '/.htaccess');

When you add a die() at the end, it catches that there's an error:

exec('ln -s ' . PLUGIN_DIR . '/.htaccess ' . ABSPATH . '/.htaccess') or die('what?!');

For the above exec() statement, a permissions problem is causing the error, but PHP isn't displaying it. How do you display from PHP what error is occurring?

Solution

  • You can receive the output result of the exec function by passing an optional second parameter:

    exec('ln -s ' . PLUGIN_DIR . '/.htaccess ' . ABSPATH . '/.htaccess',$output);
var_dump($output);