PHP: Passing two commands to shell_exec doesn't work

Question

I'm trying to give two commands on one line to shell_exec however there is no output. However, if passing only one command at a time this works perfectly fine:

$output = shell_exec('whoami');
echo($output); // This works
$output = shell_exec('dir');
echo($output); // This works as well
$output = shell_exec('whoami; dir');
echo($output); // No output...

What am I missing? I'm running a XAMPP (3.2.4.) environment on Windows 10 Build 20H2.

Answer 1

you can use the && sign to join the commands

$output = shell_exec('whoami && dir');
echo($output);

this should work pretty fine

Answer 2

I found the answer. The problem was that using the semicolon ";" between two commands only works on Linux Systems. Because I'm operating on Windows I had to use the "&" instead.

Answer 3

To add on our answer,You can create a workaround for os variance:

if (strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3)) === 'WIN') { $commandSeparator='&&'; } 
else { $commandSeparator=';'; }

then you can add it to the command.

$commandToExecute=$commandOne.$commandSeparator.$commandTwo;
$output=shell_exec($commandToExecute);
echo($output);