[SOLVED] PHP - adding <br> in passthru() output

[Freston]

I've got a little webpage that uses PHP's passthru() to display the output of a shell command. Now I don't care much for the formatting, but I want to at least preserve the newline characters of the output of the command.

Using `fortune` as an example:

Just:

print passthru('fortune');

creates one very long string of the output.

print passthru(nl2br('fortune'));

Looks like it should work, but doesn't. Somehow I don't think nl2br() recognizes the newline from the command output.

So now I do:

print <pre>;
print passthru('fortune');
print </pre>;

But this causes me to sacrifice indentation in the source file, otherwise the generated html will have loads of whitespace.

Any thoughts? I'm not really at home in all the different methods of generating newline characters so perhaps I'm missing something?

[Manko10]

Hi,

print passthru(nl2br('fortune'));

is mindless. This would be correct:

print nl2br(passthru('fortune'));

[Freston]

Hi,

print passthru(nl2br('fortune'));

is mindless. This would be correct:

print nl2br(passthru('fortune'));

But, both do exactly the same thing

And neither do what I want... PHP5.2

[Manko10]

No, they don't do the same thing.
Your version adds BR tags to the string 'fortune' where obviously aren't any and my version adds BR to the output of passthru('fortune'). The latter should definitely work. If not there might be some issue with the break escape sequences not with the function notation itself. If so try

 print preg_replace('#(\r\n?|\n)#', '<br>$1', passthru('fortune')); 
  

[Freston]

No, they don't do the same thing.

Ah, yes, thanks.

 print preg_replace('#(\r\n?|\n)#', '<br>$1', passthru('fortune')); 
  

Nope, but in all instances, always the html source displays correct. So there is are newlines coming from passthru('fortune') and that are showing up in the html source.


I made this php file:

 <?php
print "<br>---<br>";
print passthru('cat test');
print "<br>---<br>";
print nl2br(passthru('cat test'));
print "<br>---<br>";
print passthru(nl2br('cat test'));
print "<br>---<br>";
print preg_replace('#(\r\n?|\n)#', '<br>$1', passthru('cat test'));
print "<br>---<br>";
?>  

And this text file called 'test':

line 1
line 2

Output in browser:

---
line 1 line 2
---
line 1 line 2
---
line 1 line 2
---
line 1 line 2
---

Output in html source:

<br>---<br>line 1
line 2
<br>---<br>line 1
line 2
<br>---<br>line 1
line 2
<br>---<br>line 1
line 2
<br>---<br>

[Manko10]

Oh actually I forgot that passthru() prints its output directly to STDOUT and of course for this reason it's called "passthru". So it's not an issue with the line break. To get BR tags you either have to use output buffering or even better just use nl2br(exec('command')) instead of passthru().

[Freston]

 print mb_detect_encoding(passthru('cat test')); 
  

ASCII

as well as the character set your PHP script is saved with.

That should be the same. Both where created using vim. I don't know if it may play a factor, so I created a similar file with another editor (kedit) but still the same.

[Manko10]

Just edited the above posting. Forget mb_detect_encoding().

[Freston]

nl2br(exec('command'))

Well, that's how the whole thing got started, because exec() just saves the last line of the output.

And I don't really have a picture what you mean by 'buffering' in this case

If there was some form of exec_fetch_array() like you can do with sql queries, that would be something. But even then it would seem just silly to do:

 $command =    "cat file";
$result =    exec_query($command);
 
while        ( $row = exec_fetch_array($result) )
{
    print    "$row<br>\n";
} 
  

Just to preserve newlines in html, lol



But then I figured this:

 $output = shell_exec('cat test');
echo "<pre>$output</pre>"; 
  

Kinda works. And it's a sort of buffering I presume...
I don't really like having to use those <pre> tags when all I need is a <br> (or <br /> as it's called nowadays), but if that's the way it is, then that's the way it's gotta be.

[Manko10]

You can specify the $output parameter as mentioned in the manual (PHP: exec - Manual). Otherwise shell_exec() should also be working for you.