I'm using shell_exec function to call mailx command on Ubuntu to send mail, but received error as there is specific character in the command, please see my below code and result.
<?php
$stringA="Visit STAR WARS™";
$stringB="Visit STAR WARS";
echo "StringA:", $stringA, "<br/>";
$res = shell_exec("echo $stringA | mailx -s 'testA' my_email_address@mail.com");
echo $res, "<br/>";
echo "StringB:", $stringB, "<br/>";
$res = shell_exec("echo $stringB | mailx -s 'testB' my_email_address@mail.com");
echo $res, "<br/>";
When I call this page on the server, I got below page:
StringA: Visit STAR WARS™
"/var/www/dead.letter" 1/19
StringB: Visit STAR WARS
and I received the mail with content Visit STAR WARS, and cannot received the mail with content Visit STAR WARS™.
I checked from the phpinfo function, and the default_charset is "utf-8".
if i run the command "echo Visit STAR WARS™ | mailx -s 'testB' my_email_address@mail.com"directly on the Ubuntu shell, I can get the mail with **™**content.
Can anyone help me to fix the problem so that shell_exec function can send mail with specific characters.
$ [dollar sign] has a special meaning in shell scripts , so you can not pass it within the command ,
$res = shell_exec("echo '" . $stringA . "' | mailx -s 'testA' my_email_address@mail.com");
and it's always better to use escapeshellarg to escape your arguments as follows :
$res = shell_exec("echo '" . escapeshellarg($stringA) . "' | mailx -s 'testA' my_email_address@mail.com");