In what ways can the use of shell commands in PHP scripts differ from running the same commands directly in a console or shell environment?

When running shell commands in PHP scripts, there may be differences in environment variables, permissions, and output handling compared to running the commands directly in a console or shell environment. To ensure consistent behavior, it's important to specify the full path to the command, handle error checking and output capturing properly, and consider any security implications. 

<?php
// Use the full path to the command to avoid any path-related issues
$command = '/usr/bin/command-to-run';

// Execute the command and capture the output
$output = shell_exec($command);

// Check for errors
if ($output === null) {
    echo "Error executing command";
} else {
    echo $output;
}
?>

Keywords

shell commands PHP scripts console shell environment differences

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