php popen and php current working directory

Question

If I use PHP's popen command to execute a script, does is execute it in the context of PHP's current directory?

Currently I am doing something along the lines of

popen(' cd PATH; CMD');

but can I do it as

chdir ('PATH');
popen('CMD');

Test it, you tell us. You're capable of testing to see if your own code works. — Cyclone, Dec 19 '11 at 21:43
I wish it were that easy, my first code works fine on my local machine, but not on my test server (where it really matters) — Eric Pigeon, Dec 19 '11 at 21:46

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 19 '11 at 21:47

It depends on the context in which it's run.

When I use popen() from the command line, it runs in the WD that I ran it from.

[ghoti@pc ~]$ php -r '$h=popen("pwd","r"); print fread($h, 80);'
/home/ghoti
[ghoti@pc ~]$ php -r 'chdir("/tmp"); $h=popen("pwd","r"); print fread($h, 80);'
/tmp

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 19 '11 at 21:50

1

Yes, it does. I just tested it on Windows 7 with Apache PHP/5.3.2.

answered Dec 19 '11 at 21:50

Alex Turpin

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php popen and php current working directory

2 Answers2