PHP execute command and log output without waiting

Question

I use exec() to execute command, either linux or windows.

How do you execute a command, linux and windows, and log the output without waiting?

I know for linux, to not wait for the output: command* > /dev/null 2>/dev/null &

And to log output for linux: command* > /path/to/log.txt 2>/path/to/error.txt

How would you go about logging and setting it to background in one command? How would windows look like too?

Answer 1

On Linux you can do:

exec('command* > /dev/null 2>/dev/null &');

On Windows you can do:

pclose(popen('start /B cmd /C "command* >NUL 2>NUL"', 'r'));

Both examples disable output and errors, those go to /dev/null (linux) or NUL (windows) which means they are stored "nowhere".

You can replace these with valid paths on your system.

On Linux, a & at the end places it into background. On windows this is more complicated and needs start to invoke the process and cmd to allow redirection of the streams.